


corinth rains

by theshopislocal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean Winchester-centric, Depression, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Introspection, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-21 04:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 35,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30016428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshopislocal/pseuds/theshopislocal
Summary: New and improved Heaven may well be the Happiest Place (not) on Earth. But Dean, it turns out, is still Dean.
Relationships: Bobby Singer/Karen Singer, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Ellen Harvelle/William Harvelle, John Winchester/Mary Winchester, Lee Webb/Dean Winchester, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Pamela Barnes/Dean Winchester, Rhonda Hurley/Dean Winchester
Comments: 17
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

Stippled sunlight seeps through Dean’s eyelids, painting nebulous shapes in the darkness. He scrubs a weathered hand over his face and digs his thumb into his temple. There’s a tension headache lurking in the wings, and he’s got no damn idea where to filch himself a bottle of aspirin. He scrunches his face up against the sunlight and sighs; forty years tooling around the Great Beyond, and he’s yet to come across a CVS or - Jack forbid - a Heaven-Eleven.

He snorts a laugh and finally peels his eyes open.

Heaven’s sun shines bright over head, casting sepia rays from every direction. Dean winces at the vivid blue sky and looks towards what he imagines is West - though he can’t be sure, since the sun here never quite sets.

His hand clenches around the leather grip of the old spinning rod, its slack line dragging the bob through brackish water. The hardwood bench at his back is solid and warm, weathered a deep brown just as the pier beneath his boots. Dark water laps at the piles below - a soft susurrus to offset the chirping birds.

It’s a beautiful day, Dean thinks. And he nearly believes it.

“Hey!”

Dean starts and cranes his neck around. Sam is coming up the pier at a jog, grinning wide. Dean gives him a wan smile, edging into a chuckle when Sam catches a face full of moss from an old cypress.

Sam throws him a low voltage bitch-face and runs a hand through his mussed hair. Dean smiles wider, and the twinge at the back of his skull abates.

Sam dips his head toward the bench. “Mind if I join?”

Dean shifts over, his foot upending an empty beer bottle he doesn’t remember drinking. It rolls an inch or two and promptly disappears. He arches a brow; no littering past the pearly gates, apparently. He juts his chin toward the empty space at his side and grunts, “Pop a squat.”

Sam comes around and folds himself onto the bench, stretching his Clydesdale legs until the toes of his tennies peak over the pier end. He gives a little sigh, soft and pleased, and casts his eyes out over the turbid water.

Dean feels the tension across his shoulders recede, and he sniffs, eyes tracing the hazy alpine skyline.

Straight-faced, Dean asks, “How’s life?”

Sam groans. “That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” Dean smirks.

“ _Life_ ,” Sam says, hands forming vague finger quotes, “is...” He trails off for a short beat, and his eyebrows pop up. “Good,” he finishes, and huffs out an incredulous laugh.

A muscle twitches in Dean’s jaw. In some forty odd years, he can’t recall Sam ever having said those precise words.

Something sharp-edged rises in his throat, and he harrumphs around the blockage. “Yeah?”

Sam’s head dips in a nod, smile growing soft around the edges. “Yeah,” he murmurs.

An easy silence falls between them, soft and a little wondrous. Heaven is a strange sort of place, Dean’s found, and it gives him a strange sort of feeling. Dean thumbs absently at the reel and wonders if Sam’s felt it, too - the tight fullness in his chest as something expands behind his rib cage; the warm flutter in the pit of his stomach.

Dean swallows. “How’s Eileen?”

Sam glances up at him briefly and gives a tilted nod. “She’s good,” he says, then breathes a resigned laugh. “She, uh,” he shakes his head, floppy hair bouncing around his ears. “She’s thinking about joining the Arch.”

Dean’s mouth closes with an audible click, his shoulders drawing up. He adjusts his seat on the bench, hands gripping the rod tight. Sam gives him an inscrutable look, and Dean’s head dips in a nod.

He swallows again, throat tight. “Oh, yeah?”

Sam nods. “Yeah.”

Dean is silent for a beat, debating whether asking the question is worth hearing the answer. He puts on an air of detachment he doesn’t feel and asks, “You thinkin’ about it too?”

Sam sighs, weary and a little frustrated. “Kind of? I don’t know. I mean,” he leans forward, lacing his fingers between his knees, “Jack’s done a good thing here, ya know? This...” He makes a broad gesture with his hands, eyes darting over the scenery. “This is how it’s supposed to be. How it should have _always_ been. It...” he trails off for a moment, then nods, definitive. “It deserves to be protected.”

Sam goes silent, and Dean feels a clench in his chest, like an arrhythmia. It’s not like he didn’t see it coming; hunters are all hero complexes, piss and vinegar - easy pickins for the Arch. And lord knows, Sam’s a damned hero if there ever was one. But—

“But,” Sam sighs, and Dean looks up at him. He’s staring down at his wringing fingers, hair obscuring his eyes and shoulders sagging. “I’m just...”

Dean swallows the relieved sigh coming up his throat and looks down at the reel, eyes squinting at the glare on the corroded aluminum. “Not ready,” he suggests.

Sam blows out a gust of air. “Yeah.” He snorts a dull laugh and shakes his head. “Stupid, really. I was retired, what, twenty years before I...”

Dean arches a brow, one corner of his lips ticking up. “Bit it?”

Sam huffs a laugh, eyes rolling skyward. “Yeah. That.”

Deans hums and looks out over the inlet. He tilts his head, eyes tracking the little white bob. “Twenty years ain’t so much,” he offers. “You were in the thick of it for fifty.”

Sam gives a bitter chuckle that sounds as old as he is. “Was _born_ in the thick of it,” he grouses, glancing toward Dean. “We both were.”

Dean tips his head side to side, considering. It’s true enough, yeah, but- “I had five good years there,” he demurs, “at the beginning.”

Sam’s face is blurry in Dean’s peripheral vision, but he can imagine his expression - doubtful and mildly amused - when he asks, “You even remember any of it?”

Dean sucks in a breath, humid and brisk. Sam’s right, of course. Dean’s childhood memories are scant and disjointed, recorded onto his recollection in faulty stop-motion. He grasps at the images whizzing behind his eyes - an autumn thunderstorm, a wide bay window, weedy grass and buzzing bees, wildflowers and—

A slow smile stretches Dean’s face. “Mom’s pie.”

Sam laughs, husky with surprise, and shakes his head. “Well,” he concedes. “Guess that’s something.”

Dean’s smile grows, and there’s a phantom ache in his teeth. “Yes it was.”

Sam nods absently, then tilts his head and squints. “Think she still knows the recipe?”

Dean huffs. “She better.”

Sam smiles at that but briefly, before his lips purse, face growing somber. Dean knows Sam too well - how he thinks, how he operates, how he’s smart as a damn whip. Dean knows _precisely_ what Sam will ask next.

And Sam, as ever, doesn’t disappoint. “You been to see them?”

Dean sucks in a noisy breath through his nose. A frustrated, petty part of him is tempted to feign ignorance. _See who?_ , it wants to say, as if he’s got no idea. As if ‘they live over yonder’ wasn’t the first thing Bobby told him. As if Dean hadn’t picked any direction _but_ ‘yonder’ and floored it for forty damn years.

“Not yet,” he says instead.

Sam nods, unsurprised and unfazed. “Yeah, me neither,” he intones. His head tips back, hair catching on the splintered wood of the bench, and his eyes scan the endless blue above. “Guess there’s a lot of things I’m not ready for.”

There’s a sour note in Sam’s voice, a sort of self-censure that Dean knows all too well. He supposes he’s not the only one whose baggage followed him to Heaven, but he finds he’s not glad for the company.

“Well,” he says, turning to Sam with the softest smile he can muster, “ya got time, little brother.”

Sam angles his head to stare at Dean. Dean stares back, and whatever Sam sees has him going glassy-eyed and pinch-lipped. He pulls in a shaky breath, eyes squeezing shut. “ _Man_ , I missed you.”

Dean’s jaw clenches, and his vision goes a little hazy at the edges. There’s a brief, sharp twinge in the center of his back - a remembrance of his last moment on earth. He recalls the aching, burrowing pain, not of the rebar, but of Sam’s crumbling face. Dean doubts he could survive it again; he didn’t even survive it the first time.

So he summons the closest thing he can to a smile and says gruffly, “‘Course ya did. I’m amazing.”

Sam’s eyes flick open, and he chokes out a laugh - brittle and waterlogged, but unrestrained. “Yeah,” he grumbles. “Yeah, you are.”

A moment passes, calm and quiet. The salted breeze stirs the moss overhead. A bird chirps a strange tuneless song. The sky reflects the water, and the water reflects the sky.

Sam is here - _everyone’s_ here. And they’re all safe, all happy. And Dean is

Dean is

...Dean is—

“Catch anything good?”

Dean starts and looks back at his brother, but Sam’s eyes are settled on the water.

Dean shakes his head and harrumphs. “Nah,” he replies, gesturing to the old rod. “Wasn’t payin’ much attention.”

Sam’s brow furrows, and he glances sidelong at Dean. “What were you thinking about?”

Dean looks down at his hands, a little wrinkled, knuckles swollen. He hadn’t been thinking about anything, really. Matter of fact, he’d sat down on the old bench, cracked open a beer, and cast his line with the sole intention of thinking about nothing at all. Certainly not the throb in his temples that’s persisted since he made landfall here, or the way his fists clench tight when he’s not looking at them. And definitely not the fact that these forty years under Heaven’s sun feel a lot like the forty he spent in—

“The weather,” Dean says, voice overloud.

“The,” Sam scrunches up his face, bemused, “... _weather?_ ”

Dean swallows and drops his chin to his chest. It’s honest enough - more honest than he had intended to be, really. Fleetingly, he wishes he could remember how to lie to Sam - as if any good had ever come of that.

“Yeah,” Dean grunts and tips his head back to squint up at the sky. “Been like this since I got here. Not a raincloud in sight.”

Sam’s brow furrows deeper, and he hums, eyes cutting over to Dean.

Definitely too honest. “It’s nice,” Dean offers. And it _is_ nice; every season Spring, a golden hour that lasts forever. ‘It’s the heaven you deserve,’ Bobby had said, and maybe he was right.

Dean’s mouth moves before his brain does, stuttering out, “I just—” before he bites his tongue and turns his face from Sam’s view. He’s not sure what he was going to say next, not really sure of anything these days. His pulse beats in his ears.

“Actually,” Sam murmurs, and his voice sounds vague and a little strange. Dean peeks a look at Sam’s face in his peripheral vision to find he’s gone oddly pensive.

Dean turns to face him. “What.”

Sam looks up like he’d forgotten Dean was there, and he shakes his head. “Oh just, uh,” a dry swallow, “Eileen and I, we. We went hiking, little while back.”

Ugh, of course they did. “Gross.”

Sam huffs a laugh. “Shut up. It was—”

Dean smirks. “You guys get it on in the woods?”

Sam rolls his eyes so hard his head tilts back. “Oh my god, why did I miss you?”

Dean shrugs. “Because I’m—”

“Amazing, yeah.” Sam gives him an indulgent, if mildly annoyed, smile.

Dean smirks wider and settles back against the bench, stretching his legs out before him. “So, you and Eileen are John Muir-ing it through Mirkwood.” Sam snorts at that, as Dean knew he would. “Then what.”

Sam sighs and angles his shoulders towards Dean, eyes far away. “Yeah, uh, we... we went over the pass.”

Dean frowns for a moment, bemused, before he follows Sam’s eyes to the massive, jutting peak in the distance. He feels his eyebrows climb his forehead and points with the rod. “The mountain?”

Sam glances back to him briefly and nods. “Yeah.”

Dean’s mouth turns down, impressed. Leave it to Sammy to find a giant celestial mountain in another plane of existence and go climb the damn thing. “Anything interesting?”

Sam makes a considering noise in his throat and replies, “Mostly just open hayfields. Miles of ‘em.” He pauses a beat, then tilts his head, contemplative. “But,” he interrupts himself with a shake of his head and tries again. “But we saw...”

Sam trails off, and Dean’s hackles rise. He settles his gaze squarely on Sam’s face, jaw pulling tight. “What.”

Sam’s mouth goes a little slack, eyes scanning side to side, though Dean doubts he’s seeing anything. “I dunno,” he intones, squinting. “Something weird.”

Dean’s molars grind together, and he clenches both hands on the rod’s cracked leather grip. His voice comes out coarse, gravelly. “You tell the Arch?”

That gets Sam’s attention. “What?” he asks, eyes snapping to Dean’s. “Oh, uh. No,” he says and makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. “It wasn’t, uh. Wasn’t _bad_ weird. Just...” He shrugs and bites his lip. “There was a place, in the distance. Like a, a tiny little forest. Just a few trees and a—” he tips his head to the side, frowning, “a building.”

Dean adjusts his shoulders, the tension across his back hunching him forward. “A building,” he repeats. The hunter in him is banging around his chest like a Ma’lak box, and the fingers of his right hand twitch for his 1911 - can nearly feel her etched steel and pearl panels. “Abandoned?”

“Looked like it, yeah,” Sam says, and squints harder. “I dunno, maybe a... farmhouse?” Another head shake. “Or an old barn?”

Dean stares at the side of Sam’s head, then turns back towards the inlet. “Huh.” He’s seen some scattered buildings across the countryside - Harvelle’s just off the highway, Bobby’s by the river. Sam and Eileen’s place just outside the forest, and Dean’s own little bunker near the marsh. He’s yet to come across a hayfield, and certainly not an abandoned barn.

“We didn’t get too close,” Sam continues. “Eileen wasn’t sure about it, and we’d been hiking all day. But...” He trails off, brows rising and a tiny smile touching his mouth.

Dean shakes his head. “What.”

Sam is silent for a moment longer, and his head turns slowly toward Dean. “There was lightning.”

Lightning.

... _Lightning?_

Dean’s jaw goes slack for a brief second before he snaps it shut. “On the mountain?” he asks, though he knows the answer.

“No,” Sam says and casts his eyes out toward the peak. “On the forest in the field.” His glances straight upwards, eyes wide even in the garish sunlight. “Skies were blue all around, no clouds anywhere except...” he turns to Dean with an unreadable expression, “...right over the little forest.”

Dean’s eyelid twitches, and he blinks several times in succession, giving a low grunt. “I dunno, Sammy, kinda sounds—” _like our kind of thing_ , he nearly says. He shakes his head sharply instead, “—bad weird.”

He feels Sam’s stare on him for a few long seconds. He wonders what Sam sees, what Dean’s given away now, but hell would freeze over before he asks.

Sam clears his throat and turns back toward the water. “Yeah, Eileen thought so too, but... I don’t know. It felt—” he sucks in a short breath, shoulders coming up in a benign shrug, “nice.”

Dean stares at him, face hard, and blinks once. “Nice.”

“Yeah,” Sam sighs out. He shrugs again and runs a hand through his hair, frizzy from the briny air. “I don’t know. Sounds weird, but... If you’re not into the whole—” he waves a hand toward the cloudless sky, “—Norman Rockwell sunny slopes thing—”

“I didn’t say that,” Dean interjects, abrupt and pitched a bit too low.

Sam’s jaw clicks shut, and he turns to stare at Dean with sharp eyes, head angled just so. He’s got that look he gets sometimes - like everything is illuminated, like he knows too much - and Dean feels as if he’s made of spun glass. Transparent. _Brittle_.

Sam blinks, slow and deliberate, and says, “I know.”

Dean gives him a stony stare, and Sam stares right back, circumspect but open. Though Sam looks just as he did when Dean kicked it, there’s a wisdom around his eyes now, like he’s figured something out - the right answer or, maybe, the right question. Dean grits his teeth and looks away. His headache lurks.

Sam is silent for another moment. Then he sighs, barely audible, and turns back to the water. It glitters and ripples where the bob floats.

“If you’re lookin’ for rain,” Sam starts, and Dean’s eyes fall shut against the too-bright sun. He feels Sam’s shoulder nudge his own when he says simply, “...that’s where I’d go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is written in its entirety; chapters should be posted every 1-2 days, depending on how quickly I can edit them. Also cross-posted to my [tumblr](https://theshopislocal.tumblr.com/). Concrit always welcome, and thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Heaven is warm, bucolic, and perfect. And it gives Dean the damned heebie-jeebies.

He recalls a memorable night spent with Pamela - well, as memorable as it could be after a fifth of Macallan. Sam had said ‘So get this...’ and then fucked off to the local library, leaving Pam and Dean at the hotel bar. They’d drunk til the lights got fuzzy, and Pam had leaned back against the barstool, arching one dark eyebrow.

She’d had Dean supine across the foot of the squeaky queen, sitting astride him and working some kind of magic. She’d settled his hands on her slim waist, tugged at his hair, bitten his lips; he’d had nary a moment to want something before she gave it - the craving coming on the heels of the having.

Heaven is much the same - perceptive and generous - and it leaves Dean feeling just as he had that night with Pam. Vulnerable, flayed open. _Seen_.

He assumes it’s heaven’s off-brand kind of ESP that’s landed him here, seated at a teakwood dining table in a house _over yonder_.

There are soft sounds from the kitchen - cabinets opening, a gurgling coffee maker, a substratum of tuneless humming. Dean hunches over his plate and shovels another forkful of pie into his mouth. It’s sweet and rich, tart and crumbly, and he barely tastes it at all.

“You alright?”

Dean looks up to find Mary seated across from him. She’s a little younger than when he last saw her, but otherwise she’s just as he remembers - her yellow hair falling in waves over her shoulders, her eyes a soft Carolina blue.

She stares at him, calm and unconcerned, the bow of her lips turned up in a tiny smile.

Dean shakes his head and gives a little shrug. “Yeah, ‘course,” he says, gruffer than intended.

She notices, he’s sure, but she only tips her head in a nod. “Okay.”

A quietude stretches between them, peaceful but gravid. Mary tilts her head, face serene and mildly expectant, and she inches a pale hand forward on the table. His fingers clench around the little dessert fork, and he takes another bite.

She’s waiting, he realizes, for him to speak, to get there. Though where ‘there’ is, Dean’s got no damn idea.

“You know,” he says, to fill the silence, “Sammy asked me if I remembered anything,” he swallows, throat dry, and looks down at his plate, “‘bout bein’ a kid.”

Mary’s eyebrows pop up, and she smiles a little wider. “You remembered me,” she offers.

Dean’s eyes alight on hers, and his lips purse. There’s something something fragile in her face, a budding hope that he doesn’t want to crush. _You made me sandwiches_ , he wants to say _. You told me bedtime stories_.

His stomach clenches. _You burned alive, gutted on the ceiling_.

Dean looks away, brow furrowed. “‘Course I did,” he grunts out, throat tight.

She gives him a look that goes right through him - compassionate, or maybe pitying. Her mouth turns down like she can hear his thoughts, and he bites his cheek, shamefaced.

“What else do you remember?” she asks, and her voice is mild and curious, lacking the censure Dean expected.

Dean reins in his surprise and dips his head, summoning a wry smile. “Well,” he says and points his fork at the plate of pie crumbs.

She rolls her eyes and nods, smiling once again. “Yes, obviously pie. What else.”

He stares at her for a moment, feeling wrong-footed and a little short-changed, then peers through the open French doors toward the mountainside. He scans his memories, steering clear of the ugly ones that present themselves first, looking for something - _anything_ \- to keep her smiling.

 _...Weedy grass and buzzing bees_.

“Our backyard,” he murmurs, and feels his lips quirk up.

Mary’s smile grows soft, warm like the spring air. “Mm,” she hums. “Always overgrown. Your dad never wanted to mow it.”

Dean withholds a wince at the mention of John, and a muscle twitches in his jaw. “I liked it how it was.”

Mary’s eyes dart up to his, and her soft laugh lines deepen. “Yeah, you did.”

Dean’s eyes trace over her face, searching for something, though he’s not sure what. She’s still the girl who made a deal with a yellow-eyed demon. Still the woman who left, and left, and left again. She’s no more perfect now than she ever was, but...

She has laugh lines, and yellow hair, and Carolina blue eyes. And she’s looking at Dean like she’s missed him forever. Damn, if he hasn’t missed her, too.

Something loosens in his chest, and his fists unclench. He smiles, wan but sincere, and leans back in his seat, crossing his ankles under the table. “Coulda done without the bees though.”

She huffs a little laugh and shakes her head. “You loved the bees,” she counters.

Dean raises a doubtful eyebrow. “Did I?”

“Mhm,” she hums, nodding sagely. “You’d chase ‘em around, flapping your arms like little wings.”

Dean squints, searching his scattered memory. He remembers the yard, the foliage, the window into the kitchen. He remembers thunder and lightning and torrential downpour. He doesn’t remember himself.

“Huh,” he says, and folds his arms over his chest.

He stares across the table at Mary. She’s silent but smiling, her eyes far away. It’s a familiar look, one he’s seen on nearly everyone he knows in Heaven. Like they’re lost in a beautiful memory - a moment in their past lives that they didn’t regret.

Dean doesn’t think about his human life. He’d lived it, after all. That was enough.

“You drew me a map once.”

Dean eyes flick up from where they’d settled on his dirty plate, and his brow furrows. “A map?”

She nods, still staring glassy-eyed into the middle distance. “You followed one little bee all day long,” she murmurs. “Counted all the flowers she landed on. Then you,” she swallows, and her eyes go shiny, “you raced inside and scribbled it all out on the back of a—” a startled huff of laughter, “—a takeout menu.”

Dean watches her, the way her eyes flick back and forth, like she’s watching the scene unfold before her. There’s an ache near the center of his chest like a bruise. “I don’t remember that,” he says, voiced pitched low.

Her head tilts up, absent eyes meeting his as she pulls herself from reverie. “You were... three? Maybe four?” She looks down and brings a hand to settle over her heart. “It was beautiful,” she whispers, and tilts her head. “Wish I still had it.”

Dean nods at her, though she’s still looking away, and he feels a hot coil of guilt in his stomach. Mary had adored him, he knows that much, and she’d lost him as surely as he’d lost her. He remembers the expectant way he’d looked at her in the bunker, wanting something she couldn’t remember how to give. Something he barely even remembers himself.

There’s movement behind Mary’s head, and Dean’s eyes snap to it.

Something is... _growing_ on the wall.

Dean’s fists clench up, and he watches with hawk eyes as the thing manifests, forming itself into a vaguely rectangular shape. He feels his lips purse tight and his spine straighten like a rod.

Mary senses his sudden tension and looks up, following his eyes over her shoulder.

“Oh my god,” she whispers in awe.

She unfolds herself from her chair and stands up slowly, as if in a dream. She walks the four paces to the wood-paneled wall, reaching out a cautious hand. Her fingers close around the frame of the thing, and she gives a soft sigh.

Dean stares at her back where the knobs of her spine meet her neck, her shoulder blades distorting the periwinkle plaid of her blouse. She turns around, her eyes fixed on her prize, thumbs smoothing over the simple wood frame.

She comes around the table, sliding into the chair at Dean’s side, and when she finally looks up at him, her eyes are bright and red-rimmed. She takes Dean’s hand in hers, her skin smooth and cool, and slips the little framed drawing into his palm.

He peers down at it and gives a startled bark of laughter.

The drawing is entirely ridiculous - an indecipherable riot of squiggly pen lines and waxy crayon color. There’s a messy bed of green near the bottom, which Dean assumes is grass, and it’s speckled with tiny blobs of vibrant pink and deep red - flowers, Dean thinks. Near the center of the page is a single white daisy with a bright yellow bumblebee hovering over it. A swirling purple line trails behind its black-striped body, making loop-de-loops around every flower. The sky is a strip of electric blue at the top, just above an empty field of white - the landscape drawn as children often do, with the heavens separated from the earth.

His fingers hover over a grease-stained corner, illegible text bleeding through. “Jeez,” he breathes out. “Clearly I missed my calling.”

He hears the broad smile in Mary’s voice. “Coulda been the next Da Vinci,” she says, nudging his shoulder.

Dean huffs and raises an eyebrow. “More like Picasso.”

She laughs at that, as he knew she would, and it sounds like Corinthian bells, chiming in harmony on the breeze.

Dean smiles to himself, eyes roving over his apparent masterpiece before alighting on a strange scribble in the corner.

“What’s this?” he murmurs, pointing a finger at the tiny black and blue squiggle.

“Hm?” Mary leans closer to him, and Dean’s nose twitches with the scent of tart apples clinging to her hair. She looks at the little scribble, frowning for a moment, before her eyebrows pop up. “Oh, wow,” she sighs out, leaning closer. “I forgot about that.”

She reaches out a hand to grasp the side of the frame opposite Dean’s, the small weight of the silly little drawing shared between them. She’s got that look again, like there’s an old Super 8 projection playing in her head. Dean wonders what’s on the reel.

She chews her lip for a moment, then tips her head toward Dean. “You remember what I used to tell you before bed?” she asks, peering up at his face.

Dean frowns. “Brush your teeth or they’ll turn green?”

She gives him a look. “That was Dad.”

Dean tips his head back in a nod. “Right. Uh...” Dean trails off for a moment, unsure. Nearly all of his childhood memories are of Mary, but they’re weathered and vague, filtered through the consciousness of a toddler. He barely remembers the words she said, only the lilting strains of her voice as she calmed him, soothed him, protected him—

An image flits across his mind, and he sucks in a breath: a tiny figurine that sat on the mantel, with fluffy little wings and a crown of white roses.

Dean blinks and shakes his head. “Angels are watching over me,” he intones.

He sees Mary nod in his peripheral vision, and her finger taps on the little scribble near his thumb.

“It’s—” Dean starts and frowns, askance, “...an angel?” he guesses.

“Mhm,” she hums, giving another slow nod. Her finger slides across the two tiny black scrawls, vaguely triangular and joined at the middle. “Wings,” she says, then taps the blue oval just above, “halo.” He sees her smile out of the corner of his eye. “You drew it all the time.”

Dean stares at the squiggle, a frown etching across his forehead. The figurine he remembers was nearly solid white, the only deviations its pink skin and dark eyes. There’s not a speck of white in the little scribble, no cherubic cloud-seeder to be found. Just messy black shapes and a faded blue circle. Black wings, blue halo.

Black wings. Blue halo.

Black wings.

... _Blue_ —

The painting slips from his fingers as Mary takes it back in her hands. She holds it gently, reverently, as she stands and walks around the table. Dean shakes his head to clear it, and watches as she replaces the little picture on the center of the wall. It looks, at once, as if it has always hung there, and like he’d drawn it but a moment ago.

A shiver climbs up the back of Dean's neck. He shrugs it off.

“How’s Dad?” he asks lowly, and regrets it immediately.

Mary turns around, her eyes a little wide, eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. Dean isn’t sure why he asked. He backtraces his train of thought, only to find he hadn’t had one at all; seems he’s done his usual shtick of putting his foot in his mouth the very moment he opens it.

Mary seems to sense his imminent retraction, and she settles her face into a genial smile. “He’s good,” she says mildly and comes back to her seat across from Dean. “Wasn’t sure he’d like it here, at first. But,” she settles into the worn wooden chair, “I think he does.”

Dean represses a scoff at that. “Why wouldn’t he?” he says and picks up his fork, eyes downcast. “He’s got you.” He slides the crumbs around on his plate, shoulders hunching forward. “All he ever wanted.”

Mary is silent for a long moment, and Dean doesn’t look up - he can picture her face well enough. His fork scrapes against white porcelain, the sun a bright glare on the stainless steel tines.

Mary sighs, barely audible. “You ever gonna talk to him?”

Her voice is soft and ambivalent, as if she’s already accepted his answer. It gets Dean’s back up, and he peers up at her through flinty eyes.

She’s staring at him, face guileless and open. There’s a spark of curiosity in her eyes, flavored with a sort of tempered sadness. But there’s no reproof, no expectation, and Dean gets the strange feeling that there isn’t a right answer. Or a wrong one.

Dean’s jaw goes a little slack, and for a moment, he thinks he might simply say, _No_.

Mary tips her head to the side, eyes going soft as her lips turn up, and the moment passes.

“‘Course, I will,” Dean grumbles, casting his eyes back to his empty plate. He shrugs. “Not avoiding him, just...” he trails off and shakes his head. Best leave it there.

Mary takes a slow breath, and Dean sees the vague shape of her leaning forward in her seat.

“Well,” she starts, lacing her fingers on the tabletop. “I won’t speak for him—”

Dean snorts. “But.”

Mary sighs, amused and resigned. “ _But_... I know he’s got a lot to say. He just...” she pauses for a moment, then shrugs her shoulders. “He doesn’t really know how to say it. He knows he—” she cuts herself off with a quick shake of her head. “Well,” her hands raise in a brief shrug. “It’s his truth to tell.”

Dean nods absently, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He’s known since ‘they live over yonder’ that a reckoning would come for him and his dad. Dean just isn’t quite sure if he’s ready for whatever truth John might tell - or if he’s even inclined to listen to it.

Dean clenches his jaw and drops his fork onto the plate. It clatters loud in the calm of the spring afternoon, and Dean barely restrains a flinch.

Mary leans further forward, hand sliding halfway across the table.

“Dean—”

“Think Sammy’s gonna join the Arch,” Dean says overloud, settling his elbows on the tabletop.

Mary pauses at the abrupt change of subject, but deftly lets it slide. Her eyes flutter a bit, and she pulls her hand back. “Yeah?” she asks, giving a slightly awkward smile.

Dean feels a twinge of guilt in his throat and swallows it down. “Mm,” he nods. “Eileen’s gonna join. And lord knows wherever she goes—”

“Sam goes,” Mary finishes, her smile seeming to widen and soften at once. “He loves her,” she murmurs.

Dean’s stomach clenches taut, even as a smile comes unbidden. He remembers Sam peering over his shoulder as they’d stood on the bridge, his mouth slack and eyes liquid. Dean had known without looking who stood behind him. Sam had gone to her on shaky legs that crumbled beneath him as he reached her. Dean’s vision had gone blurry, and he’d turned away from them, eyes squinting out at the sunlit mountain.

“Yeah,” Dean says, voice a little thick. He clears his throat and nods. “And I get it, ya know. He—” he interrupts himself on a wincing inhale. “He lost her before.” A dry swallow. “Twice.”

Mary makes a little noise in her throat. “Three times,” she whispers.

Dean frowns, confused, and glances up at Mary. Her eyes are shiny, mouth screwed up in a tiny sad smile.

 _Oh_. “She... she went before him?”

Mary’s eyebrows scrunch together, and she sniffs. “She stayed with us. Til he came.”

Dean’s brows rise at that. Offering comfort in a time of need isn’t really his parents’ bag - at least, not that Dean can remember.

Then again, he can’t think of anyone who knows grief better.

“Huh,” he grunts in lieu of a response, and glances up.

Mary is still staring at him, but the melancholy has given way to a sharp sort of consideration. Her eyes dart over his face, slightly squinted, and she looks so much like Sam that Dean turns to stare out at the sun.

Here in Heaven, Sam and Mary are quite alike: happy, whole, and ready for a new life - a new fight.

Dean is just... _tired_.

“You know,” Mary begins, and Dean’s eyes flick to her hands, still resting on the table. “He’s not going anywhere,” she says, and Dean’s eye twitches in a wince. “You know that, right?”

Dean nods and swallows, looking down at his own hands. “Yeah, I know.” And he does know.

“Even if he joins the Arch,” she continues as if he hadn’t spoken. Her voice is ardent but still gentle, and she leans forward. “He’s not going anywhere. He—” she huffs and tips her head side to side. “He might get a little banged up, maybe, but—”

He knows. “I know.”

“—he...” Mary trails off on a sigh, stretching her arm across the table. Her fingers brush his, and he holds himself still. “No one’s gonna take him away, Dean.” She runs her thumb over the knuckles of his fist. “It’s work,” she acknowledges. “Dirty work, even, but... it’s not life or death,” she murmurs with a tiny smile. “Not here.”

Dean knows this. He knows all of this, but... But that doesn’t stop him from... It’s not the same as... 

It doesn’t make him—

“I know,” he intones, giving her a tight smile.

Her eyebrows make a sympathetic shape, and she pulls her hand back. Dean’s shoulders relax, just slightly.

“You know, your dad thought you would join,” she says with a little smile.

Dean huffs out a chuckle, bitter and resigned. “‘Course he did,” he grunts, pressing his thumbs together.

“Dean,” Mary sighs, tone somewhere between chiding and apologetic.

Dean’s lips turn down, and he shakes his head. “Sorry,” he mutters, mostly sincerely.

“It wasn’t an expectation,” Mary says, then gives a little shrug. “He just... I think he figured all the—” she shakes her head, as if searching for the words, “-the _soul-searching_ would...” she sighs. “I dunno... Make your teeth itch,” she finishes with a wry smile.

Dean gives her one back, though he feels a headache coming on. His teeth _do_ itch. Everything itches. Everything chafes.

“Well,” he starts and swallows again. His throat’s gone bone dry. “Still searching, I guess,” he says, and he supposes it might be true, but- “Not sure what for, though.”

Mary reaches her hand out again, and Dean goes tense for a moment. His eyes flit to hers, and he finds them crinkled at the corners. She’s smiling at him as she’d smiled at his little drawing, as she’d smiled when she sat him down, as she’d smiled while he ate his pie. She’s smiling at him now, as she had when he was a boy, as she always has.

Her skin looks like clouds, her eyes like the sky. She laces her fingers with Dean’s, and the tension across his back fades away.

“I think,” Mom murmurs, “you’ll know it when you find it.”


	3. Chapter 3

Charlie’s place is frickin’ _awesome_.

That said, Dean doesn’t understand most of her decor. There’s a surprisingly beautiful oil painting of what looks like the bushy-haired girl from Harry Potter standing over the corpse of a monster with a face made of teeth; Charlie called it the Demogorgon, which clarified precisely nothing. On another wall, there’s a giant framed poster of the little shruggie emoticon dude, which, on closer inspection, is itself made of other shruggie emoticon dudes. In the center of the foyer stands a life-size marble statue of Poison Ivy, flanked on either side by two huge suits of armor, armed with iron flails.

Then, of course, the crowning jewels: a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling flatscreen TV and a tiny blue console that ostensibly contains every video game ever made. Charlie calls it the Deus ExBox.

“I swear to Jack,” Charlie mutters, fingers smashing against the controller buttons, “if you say ‘get over here’ one more time—”

Dean shrugs as much as he’s able while spamming the square button. “It’s the best move!”

“Yeah,” Charlie snorts, “and you cheese it.” She presses several buttons at once, and her character - a skinny brunette in a hilarious and mildly sexy bathing suit - kicks Dean’s guy about thirty damn times.

Dean makes a frenetic motion with the controller and goes full button mash. “You cheese Mileena! With your stupid tele-drop—”

“Hey,” Charlie starts, turning briefly to glare at Dean, “Mileena’s my main, ok—”

Dean uses the moment of distraction to pull the joystick hard to the left, tapping square one last time. His character - a rippling muscled dude in a skintight suit with a yellow loincloth - casts his spear at Mileena, yelling a guttural ‘Get over here!’

Mileena’s health bar drops to zero, and she sways back and forth. Dean gives Charlie a smirking side-eye.

She shakes her head and points a blunt-nailed finger at him. “Dean, don’t you dare. _Dean_.”

Dean gives her a winning smile and moves the joystick side to side, thumb hovering over the X button.

“Dean, don’t you dare toasty me—”

He taps the X, and Scorpion spits a pillar of flame at Mileena.

_Fatality_ , the screen reads. _Scorpion_ _wins_.

Charlie stares blankly for a moment, slack-jawed and dull-eyed, before cutting a glare at Dean. “I literally hate you.”

Dean’s mouth pulls into a wide grin, and he raises his hands in a shrug. “C’mon, who could hate this face.”

“What face?” Charlie grumbles. “All I see is a _butt_.”

Dean gives a bark of laughter, and his cheeks ache. He’s learned that Charlie is an appallingly poor sport, and her swearing tirades in the wake of a loss amuse him to no end.

She gives him a mild glare, betrayed by the play of a smile around her mouth, and reaches for her giant pint glass - _‘it’s a stein, you philistine’_ \- only to frown down at the flat dregs. She shifts as if to stand, then her face lights up, and she smiles over at Dean. “Hey, check this out,” she says, and the childlike excitement in her voice has Dean leaning forward. She raises the _stein_ overhead and bellows, “Beer me!”

Her glass refills itself, bottom to top, an inch of fluffy white head settling over translucent gold. Dean’s brows rise, and his lips tick up. “See now, _that_ I could get used to.”

Charlie gives him a self-congratulatory smile and passes the glass to Dean. He tips his head in thanks and takes a gulp, face scrunching up at the taste.

“Ugh, god,” he sputters, setting the glass down heavily on the low coffee table. “What is that?”

Charlie’s lips turn down in a dramatic pout. “Stella Artois.”

_Ugh_. What are they, at a bachelorette party in the Hamptons? “Aren’t you supposed to be a lesbian?”

Charlie gives him an unimpressed glare and hoists herself off the couch. “I’m a chapstick power alpha, thank you very much.”

Dean’s sure he knows what all those words mean individually, but- “Yeah, I got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

Charlie rolls her eyes and skips towards the kitchen, tapping the Yoda bobble head on the bookshelf as she passes it. There are several other action figures on the shelf, and a bunch of other tchotchkes, most of which he can barely make out in the dim fluorescent light. He glances over at the windows framing the dining table; he figures Charlie’s gotta have a great view, being situated so near the lake. But the curtains - done in a deep, velvety purple that looks like some sort of magic fur - are drawn, the afternoon light pooling just around the bottom.

Dean feels his brow wrinkle. “Hey,” he calls, “why are your curtains closed?”

“What?” comes Charlie’s muffled voice.

Dean rolls his eyes and waits until she comes around the corner with two dark bottles of IPA. “Why are your curtains closed?”

She raises her eyebrows at him, flopping herself onto the couch. “Cuz the sun’s out? Duh?”

Dean takes a bottle from her hand, twists off the cap. “You don’t like it?”

Charlie gives him a dry look. “Dude. I’m a pasty code-jockey otaku.”

This time, Dean isn’t sure he knows what any of those words mean. He squints at her, shaking his head.

She sighs. “Sunlight could kill me.”

Dean snorts a laugh. “Ah.” He vaguely remembers a case he’d worked solo while Sam was at university: a teenage boy had spawned a Tulpa while writing a (surprisingly good) web comic. Dean had interviewed him in his dorm room - all empty Mountain Dew bottles and half-eaten bowls of ramen. Kid looked like he hadn’t seen the sun in years.

Back then, Dean had told him to pull the comic from his site and go the hell outside. Now, Dean feels mild envy for him and Charlie both.

“I miss rain,” Dean says, and it feels like a confession.

Charlie turns toward him and tilts her head, expression curious and bemused.

Dean harrumphs and adjusts his seat. “I mean, I like the—” he gestures vaguely toward the window, “—the picnic weather, too, I just...” he trails off, noting Charlie’s scrunched frown, and shrugs. “I dunno. Sam says there’re storms, past the mountain.”

Charlie’s brow smoothes at that, and she perks up, grabbing her stein with both hands. “Probably. All kinds of weird stuff over there.” She takes a long swig and gives a tiny burp that has Dean huffing a laugh. “You seen the mini forest in the field?”

Dean sobers and shakes his head. “He said that’s where the storm was.”

“Oh,” Charlie murmurs. “Huh. Wasn’t last time I saw it.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You’ve been over the mountain?” He tries to picture her with a bindle in place of an iPhone and hiking boots in lieu of her Converse, but comes up short.

Charlie smirks at him and takes another gulp, licking the foam from her top lip. “I may have spent my first afternoon here flying around on a broomstick like Harry Potter.”

Dean tips his head back in a nod. He really should’ve guessed that. He brings his bottle to his mouth, taking a cautious sniff to make sure he’s not drinking any more of that wimpy shit, and gives Charlie a sidelong glance. “Did you catch the snitch?”

Charlie beams. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

Dean shakes his head and smiles. “Attagirl.” He takes a long drink, enough to clear the neck, and savors the bitter hoppy flavor on his tongue. It’s a damn sight better than the swill he’s had with Bobby. Or whatever the fuck Stella Artois is.

“It was on fire.”

Dean swallows and cuts a glance at Charlie. “What?”

“The forest,” she says, smoothing a finger over the lip of her glass. “I mean, not the whole thing, just a couple trees near this, like, barn thing? They were all charred.” She tilts her head, considering. “Coulda been lightning, I guess? I dunno.”

Dean feels a pit open up in his stomach, strange and unbidden. He sets his beer down on the table, butting it up against his controller. “You tell the Arch?”

Charlie shrugs. “Kevin said not to worry about it.”

Dean’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, and he turns fully toward her. “You talked to Kevin?”

When he’d heard through the grapevine that Kevin had finally made it over, Dean had sent Jack a silent, thankful prayer. He’s thought about checking in on the kid, but word has it he’s top dog at the Library - the new and improved Scribe of Heaven. Dean figures that’s about as close to ‘advanced placement’ as the kid is likely to get, this side of the pearly gates.

“I stopped by the Library,” Charlie says, nonchalant. Then she gives Dean a mischievous grin, raising her glass to her mouth. “Wanted to see if they had _Lady Death in Lingerie_.”

Dean frowns. “Is that... Is that porn?”

Charlie smirks at him. “It’s a comic, but... yes, yes it is.”

Dean blinks hard and gives her an incredulous look. “You got Kevin out of the Library ... for cartoon porn?”

“Hey,” Charlie demurs, “you don’t get to say anything about cartoon porn, I’ve seen your browser history.” Dean rolls his eyes even as his face warms, but doesn’t offer a defense.

“And no,” she continues, eyes going shifty. “He let me in.”

Charlie’s posture is stiff, her eyes round with manufactured innocence. She was a shit liar when she was alive, and she’s an even shittier one dead.

Dean gives her a blatantly doubtful look. “He let you in.”

Charlie puffs her cheeks out and her eyes dart side to side. For a second, she looks like she might try to stick to her guns, but she blows out a sigh instead. “Okay,” she concedes. “Maybe ‘let’ isn’t the right word.”

Dean breathes out a mildly bewildered laugh, pressing his forehead to the bottle in his hands. “You _broke_ into Heaven’s Library?”

Her tiny white hands rise in a shameless shrug. “You can take the girl out of the corporate espionage scheme...”

Dean shakes his head, smiling wry but wide, stomach aching with laughter. “Pretty hardcore,” he says, then faces forward. “For a nerd.” He takes another short sip, noting Charlie’s scowl in his peripheral vision.

“Well,” she huffs and grabs her stein, “you’re pretty ripped.” She lets that hang for a moment, until Dean looks over at her, brows raised. “For a handmaiden,” she smirks and takes a smug pull.

Dean rolls his eyes and nods around a dry smile. Charlie gives a tittering laugh that he can’t help but return, and he polishes off his beer, shoulder butted up against hers.

He stares down into the empty bottle, turning it between his thumb and middle finger. “So Kevin said it’s fine?” he asks. He keeps his tone mild so as not to betray his peculiar unease, but he can’t quite suppress the note of concern. “Tiny burnt forest with lightning and a creepy barn?”

She shrugs and chugs the last inch of her beer in a great swallow. “I guess?” she says, voice thick. “I don’t know.” She belches for a solid three seconds, and Dean turns his lips down, impressed. “Got the feeling it was kinda...” she tips her head side to side, “top secret? Maybe not, like, nuclear football level, but… something.”

Dean snorts and glares into the chasm inside his beer bottle. “What, you think Heaven’s got an Area 51?”

Charlie shrugs again, grabbing her controller to select a new fighter. “Stranger things, I guess.”

Dean nods absently and casts his eyes about the room. The shruggie guy is still shrugging, Yoda’s head still bobbing, Ivy’s white marble eyes staring sightlessly toward the door. Dean’s gaze settles on a painting he hadn’t noticed, tucked into the corner behind a threadbare recliner: an abstract composition of flowing indigo and teal, offset by swathes of pale yellow edged in pink, with a crooked pillar of white rising up the center. Dean’s not much of a one for fine art, but something tells him this is a masterpiece. Ageless and tragic and _blue_ , it tugs at a rough-sawn edge in his chest. He thinks it might be a flower or a river. Or a cloud. Or maybe a bruise.

It looks familiar, like he’s seen it in a textbook or possibly a museum. Then again, in Dean’s very short - and very, _very_ long - life, he figures he’s seen just about everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> Abstraction Blue - Georgia O'Keeffe
> 
> Editing is going pretty quickly, should have all chapters posted in the next couple days.
> 
> Come visit me on [tumblr](https://theshopislocal.tumblr.com/) :)


	4. Chapter 4

Time passes in Heaven much like in a dream. In brief, grappling moments of clarity, Dean can retrace his steps, determine the decisions and actions that landed him wherever he’s found himself. But he finds those moments are few and far between, slipping through his shaking fingers the moment he unfists them.

More often than not, Dean’s afterlife feels much like his before-life: stumbling buzzed and ill-prepared from set piece to set piece, shoulders at his ears and a tension headache waiting for its cue.

Dean hunches forward and crosses his arms on the bar. His beer’s gone flat - par for the course with El Sol; it’s usually sat on the same shelf as Natty Ice, after all. He remembers a time when he was fifteen or so, and Bobby had cracked one open for him after Sammy had conked out. Dean had held in his grimace as long as he could, but the dregs had been skunky and tepid, flat as Sam’s Ovaltine. Bobby had rolled his eyes, grumbling ‘Well, drink faster, boy!’

These days, Dean could probably down a sixer of the stuff before the bubbles went out. And with Heaven’s littering policy vanishing all his empties, it’s entirely possible he already has.

A vague silhouette appears behind the bar, tan hands sliding onto the counter at the top of Dean’s eyeline. Dean clenches his jaw and keeps his eyes down, half expecting it’s the barkeep come to cut him off.

A husky laugh comes from somewhere above his head, drawling and achingly familiar.

“Keep thinkin’ so hard, you’re gonna sprain somethin’,” she says.

Dean’s spine goes stiff, eyes widening. He hasn’t heard that voice in ten - no, _fifty_ \- years. Not since its owner had bitten out a raspy ‘Don’t miss,’ and then burned alive in propane fire.

Dean’s eyes crawl upwards, catching on the broad hips and trim waist, the curve of her chest up to the freckles across her clavicle.

She looks just as she did the day he met her - jaw rounded and taut, mouth a straight line, a no-nonsense brow over slitted dark eyes. Her auburn hair frames her face, its golden tips brushing over her wide shoulders.

He’d never said as much (for fear of getting cuffed over the ears), but he’d always thought she was a looker. Sun-weathered and artless - a dust bowl beauty.

Dean’s jaw clenches. “Ellen Harvelle,” he says, voice pitched low.

She quirks an eyebrow and matches his tone. “Dean Winchester.”

For a moment, he’s transported to a roadside dive. He sees himself: twenty-seven, undead, orphaned and sick with it. So damn angry he can barely see straight. He sees Ellen, a matriarch with a .38 special and eyes made out of flint.

She looks much the same now. And just as it did back then, her scowl splits in a toothy smile, ruddy cheeks dimpling.

“Well?” she says, leaning forward against the bar. “You gonna hug my neck, or what?”

Dean gives a gusty exhale, shoulders sagging, and hoists himself to his feet. He leans across the bar, arms wrapping tight around her back, and he squeezes his eyes closed, pressing his nose into her hair. She smells like charred barrels and gunsmoke, sweet hops and ballistol.

“Damn,” he sighs out. “It’s good to see you.”

Ellen gives a little chuckle and pulls back, dusting off Dean’s shoulders.

“Ditto, kiddo,” she says with a crooked smile. “Though I should throw ya out, drinkin’ that piss water at my bar.” Her eyes cut down to his nearly empty bottle, and she raises a sharp eyebrow.

Well, she ain’t wrong. Dean snorts and squints his eyes, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a sly grin.

“You got somethin’ better?” he leers.

The panty-dropper act had worked like a charm in his twenties - sixty damn years ago, now - but Ellen’s always been made of stronger stuff. Her brow drops low in an unimpressed glare that has Dean smiling wide.

Ellen huffs and rolls her eyes, then stoops down behind the bar, rifling through her wares. She comes up a moment later and slaps her prize down onto the counter, a triumphant smirk around her mouth.

Dean furrows his brow and peers down at the bottle. It’s crystal and shapely, its contents a deep, glittering amber, and Dean’s eyes catch on the shiny inlaid lettering across the front: _O.F.C._

Holy _shit_. “Is that...?”

Ellen grins while Dean gapes like a damned fish. “Buffalo Trace, Old Fashioned Copper,” she confirms, and Dean’s eyebrows nearly climb off his face. “Thirty years old.”

Dean’s never been much of a one for pomp and provenance; he’d as soon shoot three fingers of Bobby’s old rotgut as sip at a decanted Lagavulin. But Dean’s pretty sure he’s seen this very bottle on a pillowed pedestal behind a glass wall, and hell if he isn’t itching for a taste.

His eyes follow the curves of the bottle, and he runs his tongue over his lips. “We drinkin’ slow or shootin’ like heathens?” he asks, peering up at Ellen.

Her lips go wide in a smug smile as she slips her hands under the bar. They reappear a second later, three scuffed little shot glasses clinking in each, and she slides them onto the counter.

Her brow arches in a double-dog dare. “What do you think.”

Dean’s smile goes sharp, and he leans forward on his stool, jutting his chin out to the side in a gamely nod. “Rack ‘em.”

Ellen gives a humming laugh and sets about lining up the little glasses. She grabs the bottle by the neck, and the stopper gives a satisfying pop as she pulls it.

“How ya doin, kid?” she asks, tipping the mouth of the bottle over each glass.

It’s a loaded question, one Dean’s heard about a hundred times since he hopped the pearly gates. Skirting it has become something like second nature.

He watches the glasses fill in succession. Ellen pours like a master - quick and efficient, not a drop lost. “Better now,” he says, eyes fixed on the glinting lip of the final glass.

Ellen spits a laugh and turns the bottle in her hand, gravity chasing the drippage back down the neck. “Ain’t we all,” she murmurs and pops the stopper back in.

She slides three shooters across the bar in a little line. They slosh, but don’t spill, and Dean watches the tiny legs evaporate on the musty air.

Ellen takes a glass between her thumb and middle finger, hunching her rounded shoulders forward. “Ready to put some hair on that chest, pretty boy?”

Her mouth is a straight line, but there’s a smirk in her eyes that has the corner of Dean’s lips ticking up in a cocky grin. “Big talk,” he says and grabs a shot in a loose fist. He holds it up in a vague toast, grunting a sporting, “Cheers.”

The first goes down smooth like warm honeyed water, with a bite at the end that has him reaching for the next. The second is bite all the way through, spiced and peaty against the flat of his tongue. He takes a short gasp of breath before the last, and he’s glad he did; it hits him like wildfire, scalding his throat with brine and accelerant - a salt n’ burn in a tiny scratched glass.

Ellen makes a sound like ‘hoo-ey’, and Dean looks up at her through watery eyes. Her face is screwed up, tongue running over her teeth, and Dean huffs a laugh that feels like smoke in his lungs.

“Damn,” he says, voice thick in his throat. He sniffs and blinks back tears around an open-mouth smile. “You know you ain’t gotta liquor me up if you wanna take advantage, right?”

Ellen grumbles and runs her hand through her hair, before pointing a chiding finger at Dean. “Mind your tongue, boy,” she says and drops her hands to the edge of the bar. “Bill hears you talkin’ like that, he’ll put one between your eyes.”

That brings Dean up short. A startled beat passes as Ellen stacks up the shot glasses, and Dean stares at the top of her head, slack-jawed.

His voice comes back to him on a stuttering exhale. “You got Bill back,” he murmurs.

Ellen’s hands freeze, and she glances up at Dean, circumspect. She holds his eyes for a brief moment, then smiles down at her little glass tower.

“Yeah,” she says, settling her elbows on the bar. “First thing I laid eyes on after your boy fixed up the joint.” She snorts under her breath, shaking her head. “Bout fell over when I saw him. It was...” Her voice cuts out, and she pulls her bottom lip through her teeth, eyes far away. “A moment.”

Dean watches her - the way her eyes flick back and forth, a tiny smile curving her mouth, the dim fluorescent light glinting off her hair. She stares on, blithe and lovely, an understated joy hovering around her.

Dean’s eyes cut down to his hands, one clenched so tight it shows white at the knuckles.

“Well,” he says, mustering a smile. “I’m real happy for ya.”

He means the words - entirely, wholeheartedly - but there’s a blue note in his tone that he can’t quite suppress. He broadens his smile, lets his crow’s feet show, and slips his last glass on top of the stack.

Ellen tips her head, sharp-eyed and considering. Dean holds his counterfeit smile for a moment, the weight of her gaze pulling his lips down; then he drops his eyes to his hands, fingers laced and wringing on the bar.

Digging his fingernails into his knuckles, he wonders when exactly he forgot how to play it cool.

Ellen gives an inscrutable hum, then slides the glasses off the bar and into the sink, spinning the rusted chrome spigot. Dean watches the water pour from the spout, wondering idly if it’s holy.

“You could have that too, you know,” Ellen says, eyes fixed on the basin. “A Moment.”

Dean’s mouth drops open of its own volition, and he snaps it shut with an audible click. He scrubs a hand over his face, hiding the sudden warm spots.

“Yeah, well,” he says, gruff. “I never really had, uh,” he wets his lip, shaking his head, “a Bill.” He gives her a tight smile, pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The words taste wrong - but then, so does everything else.

Ellen’s eyes narrow for a split second before her face goes carefully blank, eyes falling back to the sink. “You could have.”

Dean’s eyes snap to her face, still downturned, and his jaw clenches tight. A frisson of panic runs through him, crystallizing into a hard mass somewhere behind his sternum. It’s heavy and dense, with a beguiling gravity that pulls him _in_ \- _in_ to the Empty space where he thinks his soul might have been, _in_ to the trussed up ma’lak box of Shit He Doesn’t Think About. This close to it, he can just make out the whispering voice—

_Happiness isn’t in the having._

A shaft of sunlight pours in through an open window, bright and garish against Dean’s eyes. He shakes his head, quick and spasmodic, and glances back up at Ellen.

Her eyebrows are drawn together in a guileless frown, the errant ray of sunshine lightening her hair, and she looks so very, very much like—

_Joanna Beth_.

Of course, Jo.

Everyone with two eyes had seen the flickering flame between them - always teetering between roaring to life and sputtering out. In the end, he’d kissed her mouth as she lay dying, and watched her burn in salted fire. He’d soldiered on, dry-eyed and numb, and added her name to a bill he couldn’t pay.

_You could have_. Dean almost laughs.

“Yeah, well,” Dean grumbles, voice rough in his throat. “Jo’s probably the sweetest girl I ever met, but—”

Ellen barks a dry laugh. “Oh honey, it never woulda worked with you and Jo.”

Dean peers up at her askance, and she stares back, face straight but for a tiny wry smile.

She grabs a damp dish towel from the sink and dries her hands, giving a loose shrug. “You were too old for her.”

Dean huffs a brittle laugh and nods down at his hands. That much is certainly true, but- “No tellin’ the jailbait that,” he mutters.

“Nah, I ain’t talkin ‘bout numbers,” Ellen counters. “Even if she’d been your age...” She breathes out a sigh, and Dean looks up at her. The little rag is balled up in her loose fist, her lip caught between her teeth.

She’s silent for a short beat, unfocused eyes downcast. Then she sucks in a short breath and shakes her head, eyes cutting over to Dean’s. “She was a kid,” she says, and gives a soft chuckle. “She’s _still_ a kid, and she’s been dead fifty years.”

Dean gives a weak smile at that, though it hurts like a fresh bruise. He’s not run into Jo since he made it topside, though he’d seen her once after she died. He remembers her, sitting bleary-eyed and sallow next to that bald fucker Osiris - defending Dean’s wasted soul as best she could. He remembers standing in a ring of salt, waiting - _hoping_ \- to die by her cool, white hands. _You carry all this crap you don’t have to_ , she’d said. _It gets clearer when you’re dead._

A pit yawns open in Dean’s stomach. He’s found a lot of things in Heaven - some he’d lost, some he’d never had - but _clarity_ sure as shit ain’t one.

“You, on the other hand,” Ellen’s voice cuts through Dean’s rambling thoughts, and he peers up into her frowning face. She shakes out the towel and runs it over the countertop between them, giving Dean a furrow-browed look, all sympathy and sufferance. “I don’t think you been a kid since you lost your mama.”

Even softened by the balm of her compassion, the words pull at him, stinging like a paper cut. Dean folds his arms on the bar, hunching his shoulders forward. “Jo lost her dad,” he returns, and winces at the sharpness.

Ellen is unfazed, as ever, and she tips her head, giving a mild hum. “She was older than you were,” she says. “More independent. And she didn’t see it happen, just...” she shrugs and tosses the rag into the sink. “One day, Daddy didn’t come home.”

Dean’s eye twitches in a flinch, but he nods and digs his fingertips into his elbows.

“It hit her,” she goes on, “and hard, but...” Her lips press together in a firm line, and she gives a definitive nod. “She coped.” She glances up at Dean, eyes wise and soft, her voice pitched just above a whisper. “Moved on.”

The implication hangs in the air between them, and Dean gives an imperceptible nod. Dean’s no Dr. Phil, but he knows himself well enough to acknowledge this particular truth. And Sam had pulled enough armchair psychiatry on him over the years to nearly convince him there was no shame in it.

Nearly.

Dean harrumphs around the tightness in his throat. “How is she?” he grunts. “Jo?”

Ellen blinks at him for a moment, brows raised. Then she breathes a tiny sigh and nods her head. “Good,” she says mildly, leaning forward against the bar. “Real good.” She laughs a little and settles her elbows on the countertop. “Joined the Arch practically the second it was formed. Think she mighta been their first recruit.” Another soft chuckle. “If you could even call it that, champin’ at the bit like she was.”

Dean didn’t know Jo’d joined up, but he supposes he could’ve guessed. Hero complexes, piss and vinegar, after all - the sword Jo’d lived and died by.

Dean shifts in his seat, shoulders tightening. “She likes it?”

Ellen’s eyebrows pop up, and she smiles wide. “She loves it,” she crows, tipping her head toward the bar’s saloon style doors. “She and Bill’re runnin’ rounds as we speak.” Her eyes go distant and the slightest bit shiny. “Huntin’ with her daddy,” she intones with a soft smile, “like she always wanted.”

An image floats to the surface of Dean’s mind: Jo, young and gung-ho, twirling a little knife inscribed with her dad’s initials. Dean had told her how John had taken him shooting when he was a boy, how he’d hit every can dead on. _He must’ve been proud_ , she’d said, and Dean had snorted. Yeah, John was proud of him. When he made the shot.

Dean’s hand clenches into a fist, fingernails rasping against his palm. “She’s happy?” he asks, eyes fixed on the countertop.

Ellen is silent for a long, gravid moment. The weight of her gaze pushes down on Dean’s shoulders, compressing his spine.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Yeah, she’s real happy.”

The tension across Dean’s back lessens by a fraction. It’s the least Jo deserves - the least _all_ the Harvelles deserve. He nods to himself as the sun comes in through the window again, illuminating the smooth planes of Ellen’s face. The glare hurts Dean’s eyes, but he’s glad it’s shining on someone.

“But,” Ellen starts, and Dean’s eyes snap to hers. She tilts her head, considerate and a little sad. “You’re not,” she says plainly, a frown etched into her forehead.

Dean blanches for an instant, a ribbon of shame tugging through him as the pit in his stomach gapes wider. He gives himself a little shake and smoothes his face into a crooked smile.

“That’s not—” he starts, then shakes his head, lips pursing. “I’m fine,” he says, bald and unyielding. “I’m good.”

Ellen’s eyebrows form an oblique line, doubtful and sympathetic. Dean almost laughs; Ellen never took his bullshit before, he’s not sure why he thought she’d start now.

She holds his stare until his eyes flutter down, his shoulders rising on a deep sigh.

He tries for honesty - the sort of frankness that always terrified him when he was alive - but his voice comes out defenseless and confused, all the bluster of a moment ago dispersed like smoke. “I dunno,” he grunts. “I got Sammy, got—” he hides a stutter behind a grumbling harrumph, “—got Mom and Dad.” He nods his head towards Ellen. “Got you guys, and this...” a vague wave toward the sunlit window, “...place.” He pauses, weighing the validity of the words against the hollowness in his chest, and shakes his head. “Got everything I ever wanted.”

Ellen is silent for half a moment, then gives a pensive hum. He sees her hand slide along the bar toward the whisky bottle, a forgotten MacGuffin sitting half empty.

Her fingers wrap around it, smoothing over the embossed lettering. “Got everything you _thought_ you wanted,” she returns.

Dean feels his face shift into a frown, and he arches an eyebrow at her. “You think there’s somethin’ I want more’n all this?” he counters, a stiff forefinger waving in an all-encompassing gesture.

Ellen’s lips turn down, and she grasps the bottle between her palms. She turns it idly for a moment, then reaches into the sink for a shot glass, plopping it down on the counter between them.

“I think,” she begins, pulling the stopper from the bottle, “there might be something you thought you couldn’t have.”

The breath freezes in Dean’s chest, and his muscles stiffen in a full-bodied flinch.

_The one thing I want_ , comes the whispering voice, gravelly and bleak like something dragged across a tundra. _It’s something I know I can’t—_

Dean bites his cheek so hard he tastes copper, and he drags his eyes back to Ellen’s downturned face.

She carries on, heedless of Dean’s momentary lapse. “And because you’re,” she huffs a dry laugh, “well, _you_...” She peers up at his face, and whatever she sees has her brow furrowing deep. She shakes her head once and grabs the bottle, tipping the mouth toward the water-spotted glass as she says, “I think you taught yourself not to want it.”

Dean breathes out a long sigh, and his eyes fall closed. He gets that odd feeling, like something’s swelling behind his breastbone. It spreads like a weed, or a drop of blood in a puddle of water, and the whispering voice takes a breath, as if to speak.

Dean presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek, running the tip along the indents from his teeth. “And what might that be,” he says, dull and a little bitter.

Ellen sets the bottle down and slips the stopper back in. Dean doesn’t look up at her - though her gaze on his face feels like a touch - as she slides the little shot glass towards him.

Her voice is warm and too-soft, edged with a wistfulness that greets Dean like an old friend. “Beats me, kiddo.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: this one _long_.

Baby rumbles against Dean’s back, purring as she idles at the roadside.

He’s been sat here, hands on the wheel in a stiff 10 and 2, languishing in indecision for a good while now. Though the windows are down and the visor out, he’s still sweating a wet spot onto the back of his henley, hair damp at the base of his skull.

He glances at the passenger seat, empty but for his phone lying face down.

The phone was something of a turn up. It had appeared at his bedside sometime during his first night in Heaven. He’d awoken to the sound of it buzzing against the tabletop, a message from Sam - _You good?_ \- flashing on the screen. He’d picked it up and fiddled with it, running his fingers over the burnished metal and smooth glass. If he’d never seen any of the crazy shit Charlie’d cobbled together, he would’ve said the thing looked Space Age - all sleek lines and sharp angles, no buttons to speak of.

As it stood, he’d shrugged and tapped on the message from Sam. He’d typed out a brief response - _Peachy_ \- and chucked it back onto the nightstand, pulling the covers over his head. He’d slept until the sun went down.

Dean winces as a bead of sweat drips into his eye and cranes his neck to wipe his face on his shoulder. He looks back at the phone and rolls his eyes.

It’s in his hand a moment later, his thumb hovering over the screen. There are no icons, no home screen, just a blank black surface. Like most things in Heaven, it seems to just... operate as expected - to do whatever it is he wants it to.

Trouble is, Dean doesn’t know what he’s expecting. And he certainly doesn’t know what he wants.

He peers through the windshield, eyes squinting against the light, and observes the sparse spring clouds drifting over the pass. If he looks hard enough, he can probably find Sam and Eileen’s place - a little white dot on the mountainside. Instead, his eyes cut to the lowest point between the peaks, though he can see neither hide nor hair of what lies beyond.

His thumb brushes against the phone’s screen, and he glances down when it illuminates.

On first glance, it looks no different from any other satellite map - a blinking blue dot with his name hovering over it, little broccoli trees and crosshatch roads. But as he looks closer, he sees movement: the trees seem to sway, the shadows shift, and there’s a dancing white speck where a bird flies figure eights.

On a whim, Dean double taps his location, zooming in tight. He sticks his other hand out the window, waving skyward. On the screen, he sees himself, flailing his arm like an idiot, crystal clear and moving precisely in time.

Dean’s eyebrows pop up, and he snorts. “We have the technology,” he mutters, pinching the screen to zoom out again. “We can make it better, stronger—”

He stops short at the sight of another little dot, this one in a soft, glowing white. It’s across the bridge on the other side of the forest, in what looks like a sprawling botanical garden.

 _The Library_ , reads the text.

Dean frowns and lowers the phone, staring blankly at the steering wheel. He’s got that feeling again, like he’s a damn open book - though he’s not sure why anyone would bother to read.

He shakes his head and huffs a dry laugh, chucking the phone onto the dash. He flicks on the radio, _Zeppelin IV_ blaring from the speakers, and throws Baby into gear.

“Over the river and through the woods,” he murmurs, and he pulls onto the road in a cloud of gravel dust.

**~*~**

Though stately and finely architectured with pillars and white stone, the building that houses the Library is surprisingly small.

He’s driven past it a few times, but never gotten too close; there’s something mildly forbidding in the way it juts out of the earth, its stamped concrete walkways a jarring foil to the surrounding flora. From his perch on the front steps, it looks like any other city library - modern and well-maintained, if a bit oddly placed.

Dean presses his phone closer to his ear, eyes fixed on the tall, imposing doors at the top landing. “You sure this is a good idea?”

Charlie’s voice comes through, clear and a little echoey. “Well, it was _your_ idea, so… No, not at all.”

Dean’s eyes roll skyward at her chipper tone, and he fiddles with the odd little trinket in his other hand. “I mean, is it gonna work,” he grunts out.

Charlie makes an offended noise, and there’s a low thud that sounds like a book snapping shut. “Of course it’s gonna work,” she says, tone sharp with a nerdy bluster that has Dean cracking a smile. “I poured my flesh and blood and a tiny bit of weapons grade plutonium into that amulet.”

Dean feels his smile slip, and he peers down at the little talisman. It’s a rusted iron triquetra with shining gemstones inlaid, the whole thing no bigger than his palm.

He’d called Charlie just as he pulled up to the garden. After a brief back-and-forth, she’d given a disgruntled “you owe me one,” and - through some sort of Heaven-magic that he doubts anyone besides Charlie could pull off - the amulet had appeared in his glovebox.

She definitely hadn’t mentioned any fucking _plutonium._ “Did you say—”

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Winchester.”

Dean pulls the phone away from his ear and briefly presses the back of his hand into his eye socket. He nods to no one in particular, pulling his lips through his teeth. Sure, plutonium. Why not.

“Jesus,” he grumbles. “Yeah, okay.” He holds up the amulet, extending his arm as far from his body as possible; he’s pretty sure nothing can kill him now, but he’s not particularly interested in testing the theory. “So how do I use this thing?”

Charlie clears her throat. “Push on the gems - red first, blue last. Plop it on the door, and it’ll automagically—” Dean frowns, _automagically?_ “—open. Badabing...”

“Badaboom, right.” Dean nods around a grimace and casts his eyes about the courtyard. It’s quiet and empty, the last rays of the evening sun glinting on the white stepping stones. “And if someone from the Arch sees me?”

“Well,” she begins, lofty and facetious. Dean gives a preemptive sigh. “They can’t kill you, can they. They’re angels, not juggalos with rusty barn nails.”

Forty years. He’s been dead _forty years_ , and he still hasn’t lived down the juggalo thing. “Alright, first off,” he says, gesturing wildly with the nuclear weapon in his hand, “it was rebar. Not a nail. _Rebar_. And second,” he ticks two fingers up, “they were vampires,” he complains. “Big, scary vampires.”

Charlie snorts indelicately. “Yeah, well, I got gutted in a motel bathtub by a frickin’ Frankenstein. So, I win.”

“You—” Dean pauses for a moment to consider his argument. But toeing up against Charlie is a bit of a nonstarter, and, well... Frankenstein is pretty badass.

He sighs, resigned, and gives a shrugging nod. “Yeah.”

There’s a crack and hiss in the background - a beer can opening, Dean thinks - and he can hear the snarky smile in Charlie’s voice. “Tell Kevin I say hi.”

Dean blanches. “I—”

“Toodles!” Charlie says, and the line clicks dead.

Dean pulls the phone from his ear, glaring at the black screen. “Toodles,” he sneers, and slips it into his back pocket.

Dean peers around the plaza again, though there’s not a soul (he snorts) in sight. He squares his shoulders and straightens his spine, giving himself a little shake.

The steps are short and shallow; he takes them two at a time until he comes to the landing. Up close, the building looks bigger, the door a huge, imperial thing towering several feet over his head. It’s a smooth, dark wood, its wide panels inlaid.

Dean grasps at the amulet, sucking in a deep breath. “Here goes,” he murmurs.

He ghosts his fingertips over the gemstones. _Red first, blue last_. He pushes his forefinger against the red stone, face screwing up in a wince. It depresses and clicks into place.

After a tense moment, during which his entire body clenches like a vise, he opens his eyes. He peers down at himself, patting a hand around his chest. He’s still— well, not _alive_ , per se, but at least he’s not a smear on the stone floor. He breathes out a relieved sigh and wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

He runs his tongue over his chapped lips and clicks in the green stone, then the blue one.

For a moment, nothing happens. He frowns down at the amulet, turning it between his hands. Then there’s a soft pop and a little sizzle, and the metal begins to glow, warming against his palm.

“Uh...” His eyes go wide as it glows brighter, nearly scalding him now. “Shit, _shit_ —” He approaches the door in two long strides and smacks the amulet against the lacquered wood.

He draws back his hand, blowing out another sigh when the damned thing stays put. It’s glowing almost painfully bright now, the light leaving red spots on his retina. He peers around the landing, wondering belatedly if he should take cover.

There’s a soft click and a groaning creak. Dean turns toward the sound just as the amulet winks out and falls, clinking as it lands. He stoops down to pick it up; it’s cool to the touch now, and Dean shakes his head. As he slides it into his pocket, a musty draft hits his face - the scent of old paper and tanned leather tickling his nose.

The door is open.

**~*~**

Dean gets the sense, as he steps over the threshold, that he’s walking through _several_ doors - all of which, he presumes, are marked ‘staff only’. Confirmation comes when he steps fully into the room - not a foyer or a lobby, but a sprawling study, densely packed with overstuffed bookshelves.

He turns around to shut the door - quite a different door than the one he opened, knotty pine and regular sized. Dean feels the weight of the amulet in his pocket and gives an involuntary shiver; this magic shit always gives him the willies.

He steps further into the study proper. There are two rows of bookshelves to his left, one directly before him, and several more a little ways down on his right. The books are all bound the same, in a deep beige leather with some sort of gold insignia etched into the spines. He doesn’t recognize the symbols, or any of the books themselves. He doubts any of them are Vonnegut.

He peeks around the nearest shelf and finds a central area with several long oak tables. He glances left, then right, then down at his feet.

It occurs to him, of a sudden, that he’s got no damn idea what he’s doing here.

“You’re late.”

Dean sucks in a sharp breath and whirls around, hands going for the gun he no longer carries.

The door he came through is gone, and the wall along with it. Instead, there’s a raised platform with short stone steps before it, and what appears to be an exact replica of the Resolute desk at center stage.

Seated behind it, slightly frazzle-haired and scribbling away, is Kevin Tran.

Dean feels his jaw go slack, and his eyes get a little misty. Kevin is in Heaven, and he’s sitting at a giant desk with a frickin’ _eagle_ carved on the front, and he’s running what Dean imagines is the celestial Library of Congress, and Kevin is finally - _finally_ \- in Heaven.

Dean gets a sudden, painful urge to hug the kid. He takes a faltering step forward to do just that, and the amulet jostles in his pocket.

Oh, right. This is a B&E.

Dean’s arms flop down to his sides, and he feels his face warm.

He runs a hand over the back of his neck and tries for nonchalant. “Heeey, Kevin,” he says, wincing at the slight crack in his voice. “How ya doin’, bud?”

Kevin glances at the little clock on the desk, then turns back to the tome he’s scribbling in. “Your appointment was ten minutes ago.”

Dean frowns and takes a cautious step forward. “I... didn’t make an appointment.”

“I made it for you,” Kevin sniffs. He turns a page, unperturbed.

Dean frowns harder. “How’d you know I was—” He bites down on his tongue, swallowing down the stupid question with a snap of his fingers. “Right,” he nods. “Prophet.”

Kevin gives a hum of confirmation and continues his writing. Dean clenches his jaw against the sudden awkwardness; he feels out of place (which he is, it’s a frickin’ _library_ ), like an interloper (which he also is, in an almost too literal sense). He sucks his teeth and saunters over to one of the long tables, running his fingers over the polished surface.

He glances up at Kevin, still scrawling away. He looks different than Dean remembers - broader in the shoulder, stronger around the jaw. There’s a dusting of stubble across his chin and a line etched into his forehead. He’s gone a little grey at the temples.

Dean squints, perplexed. While he himself looks almost exactly as he did when he bit the bullet, nearly everyone else in Heaven looks younger than he remembers them; Charlie looks about the same as when he first met her, and his mom looks almost as she did in his childhood memories. Kevin, on the other hand, looks quite a bit _older_. Certainly older than he was when—

...when he died.

Dean curls his fingers into a fist, pressing his knuckles into the table until zinging pain shoots up his arm. Dean’s not a complete idiot; he gets Heaven’s schtick. It gives people what they want - what they couldn’t have during their lives. Charlie wanted a 64K TV. Mary wanted a house with a white picket fence. Apparently _everybody_ wanted endless spring days.

And Kevin wanted to grow old.

Dean swallows dryly, and his teeth grind together.

“So,” Kevin says, setting his pen down finally. “You’re here.” He looks up at Dean, and his eyes are dark, lined with crow’s feet. “Did you...” He pauses for a moment, head tilted in mild expectation, “...need something?”

Dean stares for a second, jaw working soundlessly. Then he bites down on the inside of his cheek, giving Kevin a tight, crooked smile. “Oh, just,” he gives a twitchy shrug. “Thought I’d stop by.”

Kevin watches him for a short, taut moment, eyes flicking across Dean’s face. Dean swallows again, shoulders coming up.

Finally, Kevin gives a solemn nod and picks up his pen. He turns back to his notebook and jots something down. Dean thinks he sees a tiny smile around his mouth.

Kevin turns another page. “If you’re looking for _Lady Death in Lingerie_ , it’s been checked out.”

Dean frowns for half a second, then his chin drops to his chest. Right. Cartoon porn.

Dean nods his head, pursing his lips. “Funny,” he murmurs, and Kevin’s eyes flick to his for an instant, squinted and wry.

Kevin goes back to his scribbling, and Dean inches closer, curious, but a low harrumph from Kevin has him taking a step back.

He sits down on the end of the nearest table, twiddling his thumbs. From this distance, he can barely hear the pen scratching over the paper, and the interminable silence grows oppressive.

Dean clears his throat. “So,” he says, and waves a hand in a broad gesture. “What, uh. What all you got in this place?”

Kevin turns another page and doesn’t look up. “Everything ever written, said, or done by everyone in the universe.”

Dean’s eyebrows pop up, and his head tips in a bemused nod. “Oh, is that all.”

Kevin sniffs. “And the Ark of the Covenant.”

Dean’s eyes go wide, brow furrowing. “Wh-. Seriously?”

Kevin gives him a flat, baleful look that clarifies precisely zero, then turns back to his giant book.

Dean nods at nothing in particular and chews his lip. “How do you keep it all organized?”

A muscle in Kevin’s jaw twitches. “Automagically.”

Dean blows out a sigh, making a note in his head to inform Charlie that he’ll be cheesing Scorpion for the rest of eternity, thanks. Presuming Kevin doesn’t send him off to Heaven jail.

Dean winces. “So you heard all that, did ya.”

Kevin hums, scribbling away.

Lost for words, Dean casts his eyes about the study. Now that the door through which he entered is gone, there don’t seem to be any doors at all. He sighs and peers around at the walls; maybe there’s a window he can throw himself out of.

His eyes catch on something high up on the far wall - not a window, but a block of text in a language Dean doesn’t recognize. It looks to be handwritten in some sort of deep gold paint. It glows faintly against the eggshell wall.

Once he sees that first scribble, he begins to notice several others. There’s one nearly at the ceiling kitty-corner to Kevin’s desk that looks like it might be in Japanese. Another on the wall opposite him that’s comprised of funny little hieroglyphs in a spiral pattern that he thinks might be Linear A.

Dean points a finger toward the script and glances at Kevin. “These wards?”

Kevin looks up briefly, eyes flicking to the symbols on the wall. He shakes his head, going back to his notebook. “Inspirational quotes.”

Dean gives a rumbling snort of laughter, and Kevin peers up at him, one eyebrow arched. He gestures with his pen towards the far corner of the room. Dean frowns and looks over.

Smooshed up against one wall is a rudimentary drawing of what looks like a fluffy kitten clinging to a tree branch. Underneath, scrawled in plain English: _Hang in there!_

Dean’s eyebrows pop up, and he nearly laughs before wrestling his face into a bland smile. “Oh,” he says, glancing back at Kevin. “Uh. Cool.”

Kevin huffs a dry laugh and leans back in his seat. “It’s not really,” he says, and points a finger toward another quote Dean hadn’t noticed. “That one’s a proto-Germanic joke about a walrus. And that one—” he points towards the circular one done in hieroglyphics, “—is in a pre-Sumerian language. No one has any idea what it says.”

Dean’s lips turn down, and he nods. “Huh.” He cuts his eyes sidelong to Kevin. “Who wrote them?”

Kevin shrugs and hunches forward, eyes settling again on his book. “Senior members of the Arch. Angels mostly.” He breathes out a little sound that might be a laugh. “Pretty sure a couple of them are just graffiti.”

Dean nods and stands up. He spins in a slow circle, looking for any that he’d missed, and finds one directly to his right. It’s one of the only ones written at eye level, but its lettering - Latin, Dean notes - is pale, almost translucent. As he stares at it, it appears to grow darker, bolder against the wall.

 _Si ego loqui,_ it reads _, lingua angeli, autem ego sine amare, ego modo sum turpi strepitu._

Dean’s face scrunches up in a frown. He wouldn’t have called himself fluent in Latin, even on a good day, but now that he hasn’t read any in forty odd years, he can barely suss out any meaning at all. _Lingua angeli_ , he thinks. Angelic mouth? He smirks a little bit. _Kinky_.

He stares at it for another few moments. It’s eerily familiar, though he can’t place why. There’s something manifest, nearly recognizable about the handwriting.

“I’ve read this one before,” he surmises, nodding towards the text.

Kevin glances up, following Dean’s eyes. “Yeah,” he says, matter of fact. “Most people have. First Corinthians thirteen.”

Dean frowns for a moment. Corinthians. Corinthians. Corinth—

“The _Bible?_ ” he says, incredulous.

Kevin gives him a bland, slit-eyed look. “This _is_ Heaven, Dean.”

Dean’s jaw snaps shut, lips pursing, and... yeah, that tracks. “Right,” Dean murmurs, tipping his head back in a nod.

Kevin’s eyes roll, softened by the tiny smile around his mouth, and he goes back to his writing.

Dismissed, Dean turns back to the latin inscription. He wracks his brain for Corinthians, but comes up empty; generally, everything he remembers from the Bible is out of Revelations, since he’d essentially lived his entire life in a state of on-again-off-again apocalypse.

He eyes the script, following its neat, angled lines. He recognizes a few of the words - _ego_ , _loqui_ \- but can’t quite attach them to their meanings. He squints his eyes tight, as if by looking hard enough he might divine a translation.

There’s a deep sigh from behind him, and he turns to see Kevin, weary-eyed and grumpy, peering past him to the inscription.

Kevin taps his pen against his open book. “ _If I speak_ ,” he recites, “ _in the tongue of angels, but have not love_...” he squints his eyes in a frown, “... _I am only a vile noise_.”

Dean stares blankly at him for a moment, then turns back to the wall. He remembers the verse now, and the bit that follows: _love is patient, love is kind_. He recalls seeing it printed on greeting cards, boxes of chocolate, Valentine’s bouquets - the sort of shit normal people busied themselves with.

That first bit, though. _If I speak in the tongue of—_

Dean sniffs and hunches his shoulders against the swelling pressure in his chest. Kevin said these were written by Arch members - angels. He clenches his jaw, grunting, “Funny sort of thing for an angel to say.”

Kevin hums. “It’s also mistranslated.”

Dean frowns and cranes his neck to glance at Kevin. “Oh?”

Kevin peers up at the verse again. “ _Amare_ should be _caritate_.”

“ _Caritate_ ,” Dean intones. He rolls the word around in his mouth, and it’s coming back to him now. “Charity?” he guesses.

Kevin tips his head side to side with a little shrug. “Literally, yes. But it’s usually used to connote a—” he frowns, chewing his lip, “—a general kind of love. _Caritate_ would mean love for all humankind.” He tips his head toward the inscription. “ _Amare_ is love for one person.”

Kevin holds Dean’s gaze for a split second, face inscrutable, before hunkering back down over his work.

Dean’s face goes hot then cold - the thing growing in his chest reaching some sort of critical mass - and the words resound in his head:

_Love for one person._

_Love for one person._

_Love for—_

Dean sucks in a breath like he’s breaking the surface.

_Because you cared, I cared._

His hands clench up tight, fingernails digging into his palms. The whispering voice speaks full volume now, coming from somewhere near his heart, echoing through the hollows inside.

_I cared about you._

No. Shut up. Just—

_I cared about the whole world because of y—_

Dean’s fist comes down on the table - harder than he’d intended - with a dull thud and a sharp, throbbing pain.

He looks over at Kevin scribbling away, oblivious. Dean calls his name, but it comes out in a cracked, stammering whisper. He clears his throat and tries again. “Kevin.”

Kevin’s head tilts, but he doesn’t look up. “Hm?”

Dean licks his lips, dry tongue sticking to the skin. “Who wrote this,” he whispers.

It’s a stupid question. He already knows the answer - knew the second he saw the sharp, looping script. The instant he read the word _amare_.

It’s almost funny, really. Turns out living in the Happiest Place Not on Earth hasn’t changed Dean much; he still divides his time evenly between _knowing_ he’s wrong and _hoping_ he’s wrong.

Trouble is, with the thrum of a headache pulsing at his temples and the ache in his eyes from the overbright sun, he’s not sure he’s even got it in him to hope.

“Couldn’t say,” Kevin says, voice cutting through Dean’s wayward thoughts. “It was there before I got here.”

Dean’s jaw clenches, and he nods to himself. Kevin scribbles on for another few seconds, then stops and glances up, face bemused. “Kinda weird though,” he says, squinting, “the mistranslation.” He shrugs mildly and turns back to his book. “Guess even angels make mistakes.”

Dean frowns and curls forward, chin dropping to his chest. The whisper in his head makes a short utterance, and Dean sees himself, greyscale in his memory. Face blank in the aftermath, bones numb from the onslaught, and all he can think, can feel, can say is—

_Why does this sound like a goodbye?_

“Yeah,” Dean says, and his voice is gruff and too loud. He thinks one of his fingernails might have pierced the skin of his palm. “Yeah, they do.”

Kevin looks up at him - face blank, eyes opaque. He stares at Dean for a long moment, and whatever he sees on Dean’s face has his eyebrows rising.

Dean holds his gaze for barely a second, then looks down at his feet. His boots are scuffed, layered in fine dust. He glances at the floor - pristine white marble shot through with gold rivulets - and wonders if he’s tracked dirt onto it. He figures he must’ve done. It’s sort of his M.O., after all. Messing things up.

“Look, Dean,” Kevin says, sotto voce. “It’s...” he shakes his head, thumping his pen against his palm. “It’s nice to see you and all—”

Dean snorts a bitter laugh, and sucks in his lips. He peers up at Kevin with sharp, squinted eyes.

Kevin sighs, and his face softens, mouth forming a flat line. He gives Dean a look - admonishing, with the barest hint of pity. “It _is_ good to see you, Dean,” he reiterates, and the sincerity in his tone nearly makes Dean believe it. “But...”

Kevin sucks in a breath and gestures to his open book, then to the stack of several more at his elbow.

Dean’s spine stiffens, and he nods. Right. Some people do more in Heaven than just drive around in circles, listening to the same six cassettes on an endless loop.

“Yeah,” Dean says, clearing his throat. “Yeah, no, I- sorry, I just, uh...”

He just... what? _Broke_ into Heaven’s Library? With a frickin’ _plutonium_ bomb? Drove a hundred miles (or maybe a thousand, he didn’t check the odometer) because, what, his SpacePhone™ told him to? What is he doing here?

What is he _doing_ here?

“There’s a- a place,” Dean blurts, then scrubs a hand over his face, shaking his head. “Just past the mountain. A little forest in a field. Apparently there’s rain and lightning, and I. I’m just—” _paranoid. Terrified. Losing my goddamn m_ — “It’s pretty close to Sam’s place,” he posits, which is ostensibly true. “And I—”

Dean’s not sure what more to say - what more he _could_ say without making him sound crazier than he rightfully is. Fortunately, Kevin is already pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. He comes around the desk at a trot and descends the stairs.

He arrives at the head of the table, nearly abreast of Dean, and smoothes a finger over the pale wood surface in an intricate pattern.

Instantly, the tabletop is transformed. From the tight woodgrain rise sweeping swathes of squiggly lines, odd little symbols and soft, muted colors. Dean’s eyebrows shoot up, and he leans closer.

The whole thing is a sprawling map. Not the sort he’d seen on his phone, but the sort at the beginning of a fantasy novel, with little hand-drawn forests and ink-flowing rivers. Dean stares for a moment, dumbfounded, his eyes running over the fine details and cross-hatching.

A soft harrumph draws his eyes to Kevin, staring at Dean with mild amusement and open expectancy.

Dean frowns, face warming. “Sorry, what?”

Kevin gives a crooked half smile and nods toward the map. “Your little forest,” he says. “Where is it?”

Dean sucks in a short breath and nods. He steps forward, thighs nudging the table edge, his shoulder nearly butting against Kevin’s. He does a quick double-take when he realizes that the kid - that _Kevin_ \- is nearly as tall as he is.

He shakes himself and peers down at the map. His eyes follow the mountain range, inked in broad jagged lines, to the river - a flowing swirl in a dull, washed blue. North of the mountain is a colorless expanse, marred only by a cluster of tiny dots.

Dean points. “There. I think.”

Kevin notes the location, tapping the spot with his finger. A tiny block of text appears next to the cluster, its symbols strange and unfamiliar.

Kevin gives a little hum, then extends his other arm, hand outstretched. A book - identical to all the others lining the shelves - materializes on Kevin’s palm, as Dean watches with wide eyes.

Kevin lays the book on the table, rifling through the pages. Dean peeks over his shoulder, but the text is inscrutable, Greek to Dean.

Apparently not to Kevin, though. He stops on a page about halfway through, tapping his finger near the top.

“It’s a domicile,” he murmurs, squinting at the little symbols.

“A—” Dean starts, then shakes his head. “Someone _lives_ there?”

Kevin gives a humming nod, inching his finger across the crinkly page. “An Arch member, it looks like.”

Dean’s jaw tightens, molars grinding together. An Arch member.

That could be any number of people. Eileen, Jo, Ellen. His parents, Bobby. Even Charlie has offered a hand here and there.

But it isn’t any of them.

Dean bites the inside of his lip, pressing his palms - clammy and tense - against his thighs. “Who lives there,” Dean asks, and it’s a stupid question again, barely a question at all. Dean’s heart beats in his ears.

_Sine amare._

Kevin shakes his head. “No name listed.”

_Sine amare._

Dean’s fingernails scratch against his pants, hangnails catching on the denim. “How would I find out?”

It’s another stupid question, and Kevin clocks it quick. He sighs a dry laugh and snaps the book shut.

“Well,” he begins, making a swift volte face toward his desk. “You could do it in some—” another soft chuckle as he climbs the short stairs, “—convoluted _Winchester_ way.” Dean rolls his eyes, head tipping forward, but he doesn’t offer a counter.

Kevin moves around the desk and settles himself in his chair, grabbing his pen. He clicks it once, twice, three times, and presses it to the page, jotting something down in quick, spare movements.

“Personally,” he murmurs, as he inks a full stop, “I’d just knock on their door.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _ **Warning: This chapter contains John Winchester.**_ If John bothers/triggers you, please skip to the next chapter.

Awareness creeps in, unbidden and inescapable.

He’s at the inlet again, on his weathered bench at the end of the crooked pier. He’s got a beer in one hand, his spinning rod in the other. Line cast. Bob bobbing.

He’s not sure how long he’s been sitting here. Time provides no dimension in Heaven; there are no seconds, no days, no seasons for him to count. Perhaps that’s a good thing; Dean imagines that if time were numerable here, he’d be scratching tally marks into his bedroom wall - a prisoner of war in a darkened cell.

As it stands, it’s only ever dark when Dean closes his eyes, and if Heaven is a prison... well. At least, there’s beer.

He takes a long pull, eyes fixed on his little bob.

There’s another one floating a few yards away - this one blue and dented, like it’s seen better days. It’s been dancing on the ripples in tandem with Dean’s for a while now. Dean could trace the shining line to the tip of its rod - he can just barely see it in his peripheral vision, lost in an amorphous shape at his side.

Dean could turn and look, face the man seated next to him - but he doesn’t. He’d know that scent anywhere: wet leather and gun oil, whiskey and sea salt.

Dean keeps his eyes forward. He doesn’t speak. _Can’t_ speak. Can barely even _think_ around the weight of failed expectations, the clamoring memories of a rod rarely spared. Even now, half a century later, he can still feel the scorn bearing down on his shoulders, pulling his lips into a stoic line.

Dean holds his breath and waits.

The breeze shifts, cypress moss rustling overhead.

“My dad took me fishin’ once,” John says.

Dean’s eyes fall shut, and he swallows around a familiar lump in his throat.

There was a brief period in his youth (though at the time, it seemed unending), when Dean was entirely mute. He doesn’t remember much of it - only flashes of emotion and vague imagery. The teary-eyed frustration as his mouth shaped the words, the breath evaporating in his throat. John’s hands - callused and clammy - clutching at his shoulders, blue-bagged eyes begging him to speak. The fingers had pressed nearly hard enough to bruise, the breath on Dean’s face sour and fermented.

Dean’s eyes flick open, and he stares out at the water. He clears his throat and hunches forward. “Yeah?”

John hums, and Dean sees him nod in the corner of his eye. “He, uh—” he interrupts himself with a hoarse chuckle, and Dean’s jaw clenches. “He found this- this dirty old box of gear in the garage. Tent, bags, couple poles.” His line tugs at the bob as he gestures vaguely with the rod. “Reckon he wasn’t real big on the whole great outdoors thing, but...” He trails off, and there’s a smile in his voice that has Dean frowning. He tries to remember John smiling when he was a boy, when Mom was alive. Dean thinks he must’ve done, but he can’t quite picture it.

“Well,” John goes on. “Somethin’ musta come over him, cuz he—” another soft laugh, “—he threw it all in the trunk, loaded me up in the car, and. Off we went.” John moves in Dean’s peripheral vision - tilting his head, Dean thinks. “Hopped on 35, drove til we hit Evergreen. Set up camp, roasted a few marshmallows for breakfast, then...” he gives a deep sigh, mild and contented. “Fished until the sun went down.”

A memory comes unbidden, floating to the surface of his mind. Him and John, sitting on wet boulders coated in algae, casting lines into the murky creek a couple miles from home. They’d left Mom back at the house, curled up on the sofa with Sammy, barely an infant at the time.

John had put his hands over Dean’s on the rod, showing him how to hold the grip, how to wait for the sudden tension of a bite. Dean remembers the afternoon sun glinting on the water.

He blinks back the sudden sting in his eyes. “You catch anything?” he grunts out.

John is silent for a long moment, unmoving at Dean’s side. Then he huffs out a sigh, murmuring, “I don’t remember.” He gives a tiny dry laugh. “Don’t remember any of it, really, just... the big ol’ smile on his face.” Another soft chuckle, and Dean doesn’t remember the last time he’d heard John laugh so much - even subtle and muted as he is now.

“Think that was the happiest I’d ever seen him,” John says, voice just loud enough to carry over the burbling water. “Fishin’ with me.”

_You once told me you and your father did this_ , Jack had said to Dean, sitting creekside with his rod, graceless and dying. _It was your happiest memory of him_.

Dean had given a weak protest, though of course, Jack was right. That _was_ his fondest memory of John - a vague half-remembrance from nearly a century ago, buried under a quagmire of regrets.

John sighs, heavy and pained. “Shoulda taken you fishin’.”

_You did once_ , Dean nearly says, though he’s sure John remembers. Dean learned young that that was all John kept in his head: sepia-tone memories of lost happiness.

It’s one thing Dean has never faulted him. One thing they have in common.

Dean sucks in a briny breath. “We’re fishin’ now,” he says, tone sharp with a certitude he doesn’t feel.

John clocks it though, as he always did when Dean got snarky. Punishment was usually swift, the degree of severity proportionate to the count of John’s empties. More often than not, it was a stern look or a barked reprimand - a cuff about the ears, if John was really in his cups.

Of course, _that_ John had rarely smiled - _never_ laughed.

_This_ John shifts awkwardly at his side, leaning toward Dean’s ear.

“Dean...”

_No_.

“I don’t—” Dean starts and flinches at the sound of his own voice, cracking and harsh. His bob jerks a few inches toward him, and his jaw tenses up.

He takes a shallow breath and tries again. “I don’t need you to say—” he licks his lip, head shaking, “—whatever it is you came out here to say.”

And that much is true. Dean’s well past the point of needing fatherly platitudes from John; he’d crossed that particular Rubicon half a century ago.

John is silent at his side, but it’s flavored with something Dean can’t quite place. Sadness, maybe. Or regret.

Dean’s eyes close on a sigh, chin dropping to his chest. “I don’t need you to _apologize_ ,” he says to his hands. “I never needed that. Never _wanted_ —” a dry swallow, “—that.”

And that’s true, too, though he’s never said it in quite those words before.

He remembers curling up on a no-tell bed with Rhonda Hurley, the roach of an inexpertly rolled joint burning his fingertips. She wore his boxers - slung low on her straight hips - and he wore her pink satin panties. They’d fucked and smoked and fucked again, and when she’d caught sight of the fingerprint bruises on his arm - a relic of John dragging him from a werewolf’s grasp, shaking him roughly with fear-scented rage - she’d said simply, _Your dad is an asshole_.

He’d given no response but a plastic smile, slipping two quarters into the Magic Fingers coin slot. They’d smoked the roach to ash and laughed at the tingling vibrations, Ina-Gadda-Da-Vida blaring from the boombox.

She wasn’t wrong. For all Dean played the loyal son - the at-will soldier - he was under no illusions that John was anything other than a deadbeat dad. But there was something more to it - something he didn’t explain to Rhonda as she’d fingered at his bruises, that he _couldn’t_ explain to Sammy when he’d begged to run away.

“I understood,” Dean whispers, and he feels John stiffen against his side. “I knew—” _the pain, the fear. The fucking_ rage, “—I knew what losing her did to you.”

He thinks of Mary, serving him pie in a house over yonder - how even a hundred years later, he still sees her, gutted and burning behind his eyelids.

Dean’s hands tighten around the old rod, and he blinks to clear his vision. “Did it to me too,” he murmurs.

John blows out a harsh sigh. He’s silent for a long moment, but for the click in his throat as he swallows. Then he sucks in a short breath and nudges Dean’s shoulder with his own.

“Three days before,” he says, voice low and scratchy. “Before we lost her.” He bumps against Dean again, soft and a little awkward. “It was Halloween... You remember it?”

Dean frowns and squints down at his feet. The days surrounding Mary’s death are strange in his memory - blue-tinted and Gaussian blurred. He doesn’t remember candy or costumes, though.

“We didn’t go trick-or-treating,” he posits.

John shakes his head. “Nope,” he confirms. “Big storm came through. Nothin’ too bad, but. Lot of wind, rain. Lightning.”

Dean winces, peering up at the cerulean sky with squinted eyes.

“Middle of the night,” John goes on, voice soft and a little distant, “there’s a thunderclap so damn loud it- shook the whole house. Car alarms go off outside, Sammy wakes up just _wailin’_.” He huffs a short laugh, leaning back against the bench. “So Mary goes to the nursery, I go to your room, but...” he pauses briefly, and Dean sees his head tilt in his peripheral vision. “You’re not there.”

Dean frowns down at the reel. He doesn’t remember any of this, but he doesn’t interrupt.

“I check the bathroom, kitchen, whole damn house, but—” John’s voice drops to a thick whisper, “—I can’t find you anywhere.” He swallows loud, and Dean sees his bob drift further out as his hands slacken on the rod. “Sammy’s still cryin’, Mary’s losin’ it, and I’m—” a bitter chuckle, “—‘bout ready to pull my hair out. Then I- I look out the kitchen window and... There you are.”

Dean’s eyes cut to the side, settling on John’s lax, callused hands. John’s voice is airy, a hundred years away when he continues.

“You’re standin’ out in the backyard. Wearin’ your—” a wet laugh that Dean’s never heard from him before, “your little blue onesie. It’s got this- this big ol’ bumblebee printed on the back.” He laughs again, head shaking. “It’s soaked through. _You’re_ soaked through - hair plastered to your head. Barefoot.

“I run out the back door, callin’ your name. Heart’s in my throat, thinkin’ how long you been out here. Cold, alone. Scared. But when- when I get to you... You’re smiling.”

John makes a short, guttural sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. For a moment, Dean forgets all the reasons he didn’t want to see John’s face and finally - _finally_ \- looks up at him.

Like nearly everyone else in Heaven, he looks younger than Dean remembers. But Dean barely registers that at all - too struck by the wide, shining eyes flickering over the water, the frown-lined mouth stretched into an unfamiliar shape.

“You’re _smiling_ ,” John repeats. He blinks hard, and a few errant tears spill over. Dean tracks them, wide-eyed, as they trail down John’s ruddy cheeks, disappearing into the wisps of his beard.

“Thunder shakin’ the ground,” he murmurs. “Rain comin’ down in sheets. Sky lit up like the Fourth of July, and you’re...” He chews his bottom lip, head tipping back. “You’re lookin’ right up at it,” he laughs. “Little arms out like you’re gonna take off, and...” He grins, so wide it cuts dimples into his cheeks. “And the biggest damn smile... I have ever seen.”

Dean’s vision blurs, going hazy at the edges, and he remembers.

Oh, god, he _remembers_.

_Cold, but not freezing, soaked to his drawers, lightning cracks the tar-black sky in soaring arcs and jagged lines, and for an instant, he sees wings, wings, wings too big for the sky containing them, wings haloed in white-blue, and he throws his arms out to greet them, laughing into the night, acid rain on his tongue_ —

Dean blows out a shaking breath, eyes flicking sightlessly. “You carried me back inside,” he whispers, and he remembers that, too - John’s rough hands circling his waist, hoisting him up, pressing Dean into his warm, dry chest, strong arms wrapped around his back.

“Yeah,” John whispers back. “We sat by the big window, the four of us.” The bay window, Dean recalls, overlooking the street. The whole block was dark from the power outage; the thunder shook the treetops. “Watched the storm all night long.”

Dean had sat on John’s lap, Sammy tucked into Mom’s arm, all of them huddled together under a threadbare quilt, eyes glued to the flickering sky. Dean had pressed his hand to the window, watching it fog up around his tiny fingers.

“After,” John murmurs, and Dean looks up at him. His hazel eyes are still shining, red-rimmed, tracing over the distant skyline. “When we lost her, I... All I wanted,” his brow drops in a frown, “all I could think about was...” He trails off for a moment, chewing his lip. “Chasin’ that storm.”

Dean sighs, long and deep, like he’s emptying his lungs for the first time. His shoulders sag low, but they feel light, loose like the weight they carried has fallen away.

This - _this_ \- is what he didn’t tell Rhonda. What he couldn’t tell Sam. What he barely understood himself.

“Yeah,” Dean says, voice thick in his throat. He peers out at the mountains, and he feels his lips do something funny - a smile and a frown, all at once. “Yeah, me too.”

John is silent for a long, soft moment. The breeze is mild, barely there, the still air keeping the water placid and quiet. The two little bobs in the water float toward one another, drawn together by an inexplicable gravity.

John nudges Dean’s shoulder again, and Dean lets his body sway with the motion.

John sniffs. “Think that’s just who we are, you and me.”

Dean turns to him, meeting his eye for a brief moment. John gives him a tiny half smile, then looks back out over the inlet.

The sky goes a shade darker, a cumulus cloud passing overhead as John whispers, “...Storm chasers.”


	7. Chapter 7

Dean remembers this place.

He’d only been here once before, some fifty odd years ago, but it’s etched into his memory so clearly, it might’ve been yesterday.

It’s a little different than the last time he was here. The forest is new - if it could even be called a forest; Dean’s counted twenty-three charred, spindly trees. They provide a sparse canopy, shrouding the old barn in speckled half-light. The facade is mostly unchanged, though the red paint is a little more chipped, the foundation brickwork more weathered than he recalls. And of course, the weather is mild, warm and bright, with none of the storm clouds Sam had mentioned.

The last time Dean was here, there’d been heavy wind and soaring sparks. Lightning.

Dean blows out a breath and cranes his head over his shoulder, peering at Baby where she’s parked at the dead end.

The road through the pass had been tortuous, winding across the mountain in steep slopes and sharp turns. Dean had ridden the clutch hard, one hand on the wheel, the other patting the dash - soothing Baby as she climbed the jagged hills. The descent had been slow and smooth; foot gentling the brake, he’d soared down the mountainside, and the vista rose before him like a sunrise.

Sam had undersold it. It wasn’t just miles of hayfields, it was a seemingly endless expanse of yellow and gold, trembling under the wind. In Heaven’s perfect visibility, there was no skyline at all - just the ever-reaching stretch of dry pastures, tapering off into the sky a thousand miles out.

And in the distance, Dean had spotted the old barn in the little forest - a tiny black scar on the gilded plain.

As he’d approached, the highway had run rougher, the smooth black pavement giving way to dusty gravel. He’d sped along the dirt road a little faster than he rightfully should have, and he’d smoothed his hands over Baby’s steering column, promising her a tuneup when they got home.

The road had ended in a quaint little cul-de-sac, maybe ten yards from the barn. Dean had parked at the dead end, idling. He’d passed a short while with his hands clenched on the wheel, eyes squinted at the barn doors, arguing with the voices in his head - all of which sounded infinitely more reasonable than he himself.

_All I could think about was chasin’ that storm... Personally, I’d just knock on their door... Got everything you_ thought _you wanted... You’ll know it when you find it... If you’re looking for rain—_

Dean had learned pretty quickly that any road in Heaven would take him to the main highway. And the main highway ends here, running afield a stone’s throw from the little forest, with its half-burnt trees and familiar old barn.

All roads lead—

Dean turns back to the towering doors. Before he can think better of it, he presses his weight against one side, nudging it ajar. It creaks something awful, and Dean winces at the sound, halting his movement.

There’s a short, pointed silence, and then a familiar noise from somewhere inside - a soft, airy flutter.

He squeezes his eyes shut, hands balling into fists.

Dean is a great many things, very few of them virtuous, but let it never be said he’s a coward. He presses his arm against the door and sidesteps through the narrow opening.

It’s dark and musty inside. The air hangs thick and humid, dust clouds swirling in the flickering light shafts. Dean squints then blinks hard, eyes falling to an illuminated spot on the ground.

The first thing he sees is spray paint.

White symbols litter the floor - some he recognizes, some he doesn’t, some he’d painted himself. His eyes catch on a sigil on the wall - a septagram done in dripping black paint. He remembers the feel of the brush in his hand, the drag of the bristles across the dry-rotted wall, the clench of his fingers around the grip as he painted the seven lines, awaiting the arrival of the next Big Bad.

His left arm had tingled at the bicep, hot and cold at the same time, buzzing along his nervous system like a shock. For an instant, he’d felt a constriction across his chest, a heavy weight at his back, as if someone were clutching him, holding him. Carrying him.

There’s a shifting movement at the far end of the room, and Dean’s eyes snap to it. The man standing there - no, not a man, something else, _something_ _else_ \- makes a slow volte face.

A rusted metal light overhead flickers on, and the shadow recedes.

Dean sucks in a breath, throat constricting, and he nearly chokes on air. He gapes for a moment, mouth opening and closing like a damned fish, before he finally gets his tongue to cooperate.

“Hey, Cas,” he whispers, and _fuck_ , it’s been so damn long since he last said those words. They feel dusty, cobwebbed in his mouth.

Cas - _oh god,_ Cas - steps forward until his toes just cross the penumbra. He looks—

Dean’s throat goes tight again, his lungs compressing around his quick beating heart. Apropos of nothing, it occurs to him that his heart shouldn’t beat at all; he’s dead, after all.

He doesn’t feel dead right now.

Cas looks precisely as he had the day — _I know how you see yourself_ — he died. The day he was taken by darkness, drained away — _knowing you has changed me_ — for daring to feel, for allowing himself to have, for seeing and wanting and _taking_ his own happin—

“Hello, Dean.”

Fuck.

_Fuck_.

Dean stares, and Cas stares back. Dean’s not sure what expression he’s wearing; his whole damn face has gone numb, though he feels little beads of flop sweat forming at his hairline.

Cas, for his part, is staring placidly at Dean, gaze leveled somewhere around Dean’s nose. His eyes shine a deep limpid blue, pink-rimmed with pronounced bags underneath. He looks tired and a little grumpy, hair mussed and trench coat rumpled. His tie is loose, the skinny end dangling free of the keeper loop.

For the first time in forty years, the recursive whisper in Dean’s head is his own: _It’s Cas, it’s Cas, it’s_ _Cas, it’s C_ —

Dean swallows hard around the lump in his throat. “How ya doin’, bud?”

It’s a ridiculous question, somehow loaded and stupid at the same time. He’s not seen Cas in forty - _forty_ \- years. That’s as long as Dean’s human life. As long as he spent in the Pit. And ancient, eldritch, and celestial though Cas may be, Dean thinks that forty years rebuilding Heaven - forty years of radio silence - _must_ be more than a blip on his radar.

“I am well,” Cas says flatly, and okay, so maybe Dean’s wrong. “Thank you.” Cas tips his head forward, eyes falling to the ground. “How are you?”

How... _how is he?_

Dean supposes he should’ve expected that; it’s not like it isn’t the first question everyone asks. Not like he didn’t just ask Cas himself.

_I am well._

Something cold and hard forms in his stomach, and Dean shakes his head, eyes wide and unblinking, stuck to Cas’ like glue. “I’m good,” lie. “Yeah, I’m- I’m real good,” fucking _lie_. “You, uh...”

_I am well._

Forty years, nearly half a damn century, and the sun beating down from a cloudless sky, and eaten alive by the Void, and spit back out again, and not a peep, not a word, not a goddamn whisper, save the ones in Dean’s stupid heart that shouldn’t beat anyway and he’s- Cas is—

Cas is _well._

Something rises inside Dean, cresting in his throat like a tidal wave, and he speaks shortly, sharply, before he can think better of it. “Where the _hell_ you been, man?”

Cas’ eyes flutter shut, and a muscle twitches in his jaw. “My work with- with the Arch is...” he trails off on a deep sigh, before glancing toward Dean’s face with arched eyebrows and hooded eyes, “...strenuous. Time-consuming.”

Dean huffs a brittle laugh and finally looks away. His eyes find the septagram again, and he grits his teeth. “That’s, uh,” another dry laugh, “that’s why I haven’t seen you in, what... _forty_ years?”

He sees Cas bow his head in his peripheral vision. “Time is—”

“Different here, yeah,” Dean snorts.

He’s heard that one a few times, but it never quite rings true. They’d said the same thing about Hell, too; but Dean had felt every torturous second there, remembers them all in high-def technicolor, just as he remembers every bleak, desperate moment of his human life, just as he remembers the endless drive across Heaven, waiting for Sam to meet him at the bridge, sitting on his bench at the end of the pier, casting his line and never _catching_ anything—

“I’ve been busy,” Cas grumbles, shoulders hunching.

Dean feels a broad, bitter smile crack his face like a fault line. “Busy,” he repeats, choking out a laugh.

Cas’ jaw goes taut, chin dropping to his chest. “Dean—”

“Busy?” Dean says again. His voice cracks a little, and he swallows hard, face warming in shame - or perhaps anger. Dean’s never been real good at telling one from the other.

Castiel steps further into the weak lamplight, all squared shoulders and downturned lips. “Jack has put a great deal of faith in me,” he grunts out, voice pitched just above a growl. “I have responsibilities, Dean.”

Dean’s head bounces in a nod, jittery with upset. He makes a broad gesture with shaking hands. “And you couldn’t have told me that sometime in the last—”

“I’m telling you now.”

Cas’ voice is low and flat, but bold, unyielding, with an almost imperceptible vein of irritation. He sounds much as he did when Dean first met him: driven and no-nonsense, all righteous fury and unshakable faith. Inhuman.

_I dragged you out of Hell_ , he’d said - stood too close, eyes too blue. _I can throw you back in._

“Ya know,” Dean says in a harsh whisper, “you don’t seem real happy to see me.”

Cas’ eyes fall closed at that, shoulders sagging low. His spine forms a desolate curve, and he finally meets Dean’s eye.

In the half-light, the hills and valleys of his face are shadowed, his eyes a murky ocean blue. He’s got that look he gets sometimes: sad but... _bigger_. Moved and helpless - like he’s watching a Greek tragedy unfold in real time.

And perhaps he is.

His lips part, dry and sticking together at the sides. “I _am_ ,” he breathes out, “happy to see you. Dean.”

Dean holds his gaze, and holds, and holds. His stomach still feels heavy, his chest hollow, temples throbbing with his erratic pulse, the ever-present headache a sharp point in the center of his forehead.

Just as his eyes start to sting - his vision going hazy at the edges - there’s a soft, tinkling sound from the other end of the barn. Wind chimes, Dean thinks. Corinthian bells.

Cas looks over his shoulder in the vague direction of the noise. Dean tracks his gaze to the two long work tables at the rear, cluttered with various odds and ends. He spots a mortar and pestle, a few little glass vials strewn haphazardly about, a couple candles, and a short stack of books. He recognizes the binding - the same as the ones in the Library.

The chimes play again, muted and strangely echo-less in the space, though Dean can’t see anything that could be producing the sound. More weird Heaven magic, he figures.

Cas turns back toward Dean, blank-faced and eyes downcast. “I’m needed elsewhere,” he murmurs, stepping backwards out of the pool of light. His shoulders shift strangely, spine going ramrod straight. It’s a familiar motion, though it takes Dean a minute to place why. It must be something close to fifty years since he last saw it - a weird little twitch, like something’s pulling at Cas from behind, like he’s counterbalancing a weight on his back—

_Oh._

Realization dawns, and Dean’s jaw goes slack.

Cas got his wings back.

Cas can _fly_.

No sooner has Dean thought it than the arching stretch of a shadow blooms across the barn walls. It’s been years - _decades_ \- since Dean last saw them, and even then, they’d been painted in ash on the wet dirt, misshapen and sparsely feathered. But _these_ \- these are something else entirely.

Their shadow seems to fill the whole barn, distorting at the corners of the room where their sheer size forces the silhouette to bend. The feathers are pristine, all the peaks and divots at uniform intervals, their tips spanning clear across the side walls.

They’re huge and imposing, magnificent and a little terrifying. _Awesome_ , Dean thinks, more literally than ever before.

The air catches in Dean’s throat, somewhere between a sigh and a gasp. “Cas,” he croaks.

Cas’ shoulders rise, and the winged shadows along with them. He hunches forward, knees bending slightly. Ready for takeoff.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, glancing off to the side.

Dean gets the sense he’s apologizing for more than just his imminent departure - and no, _no_ , that _isn’t_ why Dean’s here. He doesn’t want an _apology_ ; he’s not even angry - just a little bruised, and, really, when _isn’t_ he? He can’t think of a single moment in his life - or his afterlife, for that matter - where nothing hurt, where nothing stung, where the ache in his chest didn’t prod at him with cold, blunt fingers.

He extends a hand toward Cas’ retreating figure, mouth tripping over his name, and the light overhead flickers out. He spares barely an instant to glance at it, and when he turns back, Cas is gone.

Cas is... _gone_.

Dean’s hand hangs in the air, callused fingertips reaching toward nothing. Without the lamplight, or the feathered shadows, or the humming, electric presence of an angel - of _Cas_ \- the barn is dark and just cold enough to draw Dean’s shoulders up.

His eyes squint, trying in vain to adjust to the darkness, and a headache pokes at the back of his skull. He’s sure his heart is still needlessly beating, but he doesn’t feel it anymore.


	8. Chapter 8

Funnily enough, the wings in Heaven aren’t anything to write home about. 

Dean glances down at his half-eaten lunch, licking Buffalo sauce off the side of his thumb. He’s pretty sure the plate - with its lopsided tower of wings, side of celery, and little cup of chunky bleu cheese - is meant to replicate one he’d had at a greasy spoon sixty odd years ago. To the naked eye, the place had looked like a shithole - just another offramp dive in B.F.E., Nebraska. But the wings - damn, the _wings_ \- had been out of this world; crunchy and greasy, sour and salty, and drenched in sauce hot enough to make his eyes water. 

Dean sucks his teeth and grimaces. He’s not sure what it is, but Heaven missed the mark on this one. He’s sure it’s the same recipe as the roadside joint, but there’s something not quite right. It certainly doesn’t help that his pint glass keeps automagically refilling with Stella Artois instead of El Sol. He grumbles with every sip and pretends like the mild flavor isn’t growing on him. No way in hell is he letting Charlie turn him onto her trendy lesbian beer.

“Hey.”

Dean’s head snaps up, shoulders going tense. They loosen a bit as Sam slides into the other side of the booth. He’s wearing a denim button-down that Dean’s pretty sure was one of his, and his stupid hair is extra floppy. He slides his dorky messenger bag off his shoulder, settling it at his side. 

Dean knocks back the rest of his beer in a thick swallow and sets his little cardboard coaster on the rim. “Heya.”

Sam gives him a smile, all white teeth and deep dimples. Dean tries to give him one back, but it feels more like a grimace on his face. 

Sam notices, of course. “You alright?” he asks, dipping his head to meet Dean’s lowered eyes. 

Dean shakes his head, then corrects it to a nod. “Yeah,” he grunts and nods toward his plate. “Ate too many wings.”

Sam’s eyebrows climb his forehead, smile going crooked. “Didn’t think that was possible for you.”

Dean splays his hands in a shrug. “I contain multitudes.”

His stomach chooses that moment to grumble ominously, and Dean hunches forward, pressing his forearm across his belly. 

Sam, the little shit, smirks wide. “I’m sure.”

Dean rolls his eyes and reaches for his glass. He tips the little coaster off and watches as the glass refills itself. It’s a darker orange-ish color now, rather than light blonde. He takes an experimental sniff: El Sol, this time. He feigns relief in case anyone’s looking (no one is), and peers back up at Sam. 

He’s holding the little laminated sample menu, eying over it while his fingers drum a beat against the tabletop. He chews his lips, eyes a little wide, and Dean recognizes the expression in an instant: Sam is Up To Something.

Dean sighs and sets his beer down with a thunk. “What.”

Sam’s head pops up like a frickin’ meerkat, all innocence and feigned confusion. “What what?”

Dean arches an eyebrow in a glare. “You’ve got excited puppy face,” he grumbles and ignores Sam’s snort. “What is it.”

Sam huffs a fake laugh and shakes his head. “I don’t...” he starts, then cuts a considering look at Dean. Dean stares back, blank-faced and expectant, and Sam blows out a sigh, eyes downcast. “Yeah, okay. Look, I was—” he cuts himself off, pulling his lip through his teeth. “... I was thinking about Cas.”

Cas. 

_Cas_.

Dean probably should have seen that coming. 

Sam had been rather circumspect in those few months between Cas’ death and Dean’s own; no offhand utterances of his name, no needling questions about _how_ exactly Cas had summoned the Empty, no mention whatsoever of the bedroom door he’d often found Dean stood in front of - unable to open, unable to turn away. 

Sam had been kind in his silence. 

But if Dean knows Sam at all - and he certainly does - the silence wouldn’t have lasted forever. Kid’s too smart, too curious, too empathetic by half; sooner or later, he would’ve broached the subject - for Dean’s sake, if not his own. 

And if Dean’s being entirely honest with himself - which, frankly, isn’t really his game - he can acknowledge the inherent unfairness of it. For all Dean prefers to bottle things up until they ferment in his belly, Sam is (somehow) a well-adjusted adult with proportionate emotional intelligence to boot. Sam had deserved to mourn Cas - whether or not Dean had allowed himself to do the same - and Dean hadn’t let him. 

So, of course Sam is thinking about Cas. After all, he’d loved him nearly as much as—

Dean winces hard, eyes squeezing shut for half a second. “Yeah?” he asks. His eyes flick back open, and he stares down at his plate. The wings have gone cold, the celery warm and floppy. 

Sam nods. “Yeah. I mean,” he gestures vaguely with the little menu, “Eileen says he does a lot of work for the Arch, but...” He trails off for a short moment then shrugs. “We’ve been here for a while. I sorta figured he would’ve... dropped in by now?”

_I’ve been busy._

_I have responsibilities._

_I’m needed elsewhere._

_I’m sor—_

Dean hunches forward, and his stomach grumbles again. “Yeah,” he murmurs, and he feels nauseated, hollow. Too many wings, indeed. 

Sam tilts his head in a crooked nod. “Yeah, it’s kinda weird that he hasn’t, right?” He doesn’t wait for a response, and Dean doesn’t interject. “So,” he goes on, leaning forward across the table, “I did a little digging.”

Dean’s head pops up, and he finally meets Sam’s eye. Sam’s brow is raised, the puppy expression back at full volume. Dean frowns, wary. “Digging?”

Sam nods excitedly and turns to his bag. He unzips it, sticking in a freakishly large hand to rummage about, and pulls out a thick book. 

A beige leather book. With gold insignia on the spine.

“I checked _this_ out,” he says and sets the book on the table with a soft thunk, “from the Library.”

Wait. What? “You- the Library?” Is Charlie making magic plutonium bombs for everyone now? “How’d you get in?”

Sam gives him a funny look, squinty-eyed and confused. “I made an appointment.”

Of course he did. “Right,” Dean grunts, folding his arms on the edge of the table. 

Sam leans closer, and he smiles almost comically wide. “Dean, the Library? It’s _awesome_ ,” he gushes, and Dean chews on a smile. “They’ve got everything ever written _ever_ ,” Sam crows. “Literally every single—”

“Kevin sign you up for a library card?” Dean interjects with a crooked smile. 

Sam’s face freezes, eyes darting away in mild embarrassment, and Dean snorts a startled laugh. “You’re shittin’ me.”

Sam rolls his eyes around a tiny smile. “Shut up.”

Dean gives a bark of laughter. “Man, you’re a nerd.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Sam says and gives Dean a mild glare. “This,” he begins, smoothing a palm over the front of the book, “is the history of Heaven. Since Jack remade it.”

Dean cranes his neck to read the upside down lettering, and Sam turns the book toward him. 

_Recens Historia Caelorum Vol. I._

Dean frowns and gives a little shrug. “Okay.”

Sam nods and sucks in a breath, one hand coming up to tuck his hair behind his ear. Dean’s eyes soften at the gesture; for all he’d wanted to be a lawyer, or a hunter, or a freakin’ superhero, Sam had always been a Man of Letters at heart. 

Sam plants his hands flat on the table - the final step of his pre-lore ritual - and Dean suppresses a smile. “Okay, so,” Sam starts, and Dean settles in. “Basically, Jack arrives in heaven with the _seraph_ Castiel.” _Seraph?_ “Presumably, he—”

“Pulled him out of the Empty,” Dean offers. 

“And restored his Grace,” Sam nods. “So. They get here and start fixin’ the place up. Opening up all the personal heavens, getting rid of the whole greatest hits shtick, right?” Dean nods along; Bobby had told him this much. “Then, get this,” Sam continues, leaning ever further forward, “Jack leaves.”

Dean frowns, and his eyes flick up from where they’d been staring sightlessly at the book cover. He shakes his head, lips pursing. “He leaves?”

Sam quirks a brow and tips his chin down in a nod. “Yeah. Apparently he decided he wanted to rebuild _all_ the universes Chuck destroyed. Not just ours.”

Dean’s eyebrows pop up, and he feels a sort of mild, obligatory guilt uncurl in his stomach. Frankly, he’d all but forgotten about the infinite other universes that Chuck - in his epic, cosmic bitch fit - had dusted just for kicks. 

Dean shakes his head. “Shit.”

Sam huffs a laugh. “Yeah. But,” he says and raises a forefinger, “Heaven’s not finished.” He makes a vague gesture towards the nearby window overlooking the forest. “Still isn’t.” 

And Dean’s noticed that, too. Spending hours (or minutes, or maybe decades) on the highway, Dean’s come across some odd spots: places where the grass is un-trampled and a little too green, the ground too flat, the trees too young. Whenever he passes one, he gets a strange feeling, like he’s watching a silent movie, or staring at a blank canvas. He feels it at his little bunker out in the greyscale marsh, and he felt it at the tiny forest in the endless yellow field. Like a song without a refrain, something is missing - unfinished. 

“So,” Sam goes on, and Dean glances back up at him, shaking off the odd sensation, “Jack’s gotta leave someone in charge of the place, right?” Sam pauses for a moment, brow raised, and Dean nods belatedly. “Right,” he continues. “But it’s gotta be someone who knows Heaven’s ins and outs. Someone who can defend its weak points. Someone who actually—” Sam tilts his head with a dry smile, “ _—cares_ about its inhabitants.” He gives Dean an expectant look, brow raised and lips sucked in. 

Dean frowns. Someone who understands Heaven and knows how to protect it; an angel, certainly - maybe a strategist or a soldier. But someone compassionate, too - someone devoted the people here, these wandering wayward souls. 

_Because you cared, I cared._

Dean blinks hard - once, twice - and something rattles in his chest. “Cas,” he whispers. 

Sam gives a slow nod. “Right,” he murmurs back, face going oddly soft. Dean frowns up at him, and Sam schools his expression back into business mode. “Right,” he repeats and licks his lip. “Problem is, Cas is just a seraph. He doesn’t have the juice to run this place. So, Jack—” He reaches across the table for the book and turns it towards himself, flipping it open to a page bookmarked with a gold ribbon. He smoothes his pointer finger over a line of text and reads, “ _—imbued the grace of Castiel with His divinity, in excess_.”

Jack imbued... what?

Dean shakes his head. “The hell does that mean?”

Sam tilts his head in a crooked nod and flips to the next page. “I was confused too,” he offers, “until I read this.” He flips the book toward Dean and taps two fingers over a block of text near the top of the page. 

Dean frowns and looks down, squinting at the small font. The top left corner reads _Chapter XV_ , the text near Sam’s finger marked with a tiny superscript, _21_.

Dean hunches forward, eyes tracing over the words in the dim light. 

_And the Lord God summoned into His hands four blades, twisted and golden, hilted in black. He cast His holy gaze upon them, and they were dissolved. Let all instruments return to dust, as all mortal flesh keeps silent._

Dean rereads the words, and rereads them again. Something is growing in the back of his mind, spreading against the inside of his skull like feathered shadows—

“Four knives with twisted gold blades,” Sam posits, leaning forward. “Sound familiar?”

 _I’m not just powerful now_ , Lucifer had said, beating Dean bloody, suspended in the air. _I_ am _power. And I don’t need a blade to end you, pal._

Dean had clung to the last vestiges of consciousness, had felt his destiny - Chuck’s shitty Joseph Campbell knockoff - rising to meet him. Sam had called his name, all fear and desperation, and Dean had extended a bruise-knuckled hand to catch—

“The Archangel blade,” Dean whispers. 

Sam gives a solemn nod and taps his finger on the page. “Jack destroyed them - _all_ of them - the same day he—” Sam angles the book towards himself and turns back a page, neck craning around, “—imbued Cas’ Grace.”

Dean feels his spine go stiff, brow furrowing low. 

“Dean,” Sam murmurs, “I don’t think Cas is a Seraph any more.” 

_Jack has put a great deal of faith in me._ Cas’ voice echoes through Dean’s head, and his jaw clenches tight, throat constricting. 

Sam continues, voice pitched low. “And I don’t think he just... _works_ for the Arch.”

 _I have responsibilities,_ Cas had said, just before his wings had painted stark shadows on the walls. Massive and fluttering, they’d shifted Cas’ posture, like he wasn’t quite used to them, their heft a foreign weight at his back. 

Dean had known in that moment that something was different, had felt it in the buzzing electricity of Cas’ presence, the way the little hairs on Dean’s arms had stood up. 

Dean swallows, hard and dry, and says simply, “He _is_ the Arch.”

Sam raises his eyebrows and hums. “Mm. The Arch...” he shrugs with bemused smile, “...angel.”

Dean blinks several times in succession, eyes falling back to the bookmarked page. _Let all instruments return to dust, as all mortal flesh keeps silent._

Cas is an archangel - _the_ Archangel - immortal and adamantine, now that God himself has destroyed his only weakness. And Dean is an eternal soul, freed from the bonds of his mortal body - limitless and enduring in the endless expanse of Heaven. They’re stood now on evener ground than they’ve ever been before. 

Dean glances towards the window, casting his eyes out to the distant mountain - jutting up from the ground, imposing and unscalable like a border wall. 

Sam huffs a short laugh. “Explains why he hasn’t stopped by for a beer.”

Dean turns back toward his brother, but Sam’s eyes are fixed on the little plastic menu. 

Dean harrumphs - sharper than intended from the tightness in his throat - and reaches for his beer. His stomach grumbles as he takes a gulping pull. It’s skunky and flat, bitter and watery, and he doesn’t taste anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come visit me on [tumblr](https://theshopislocal.tumblr.com/) :)


	9. Chapter 9

Dean wakes up. 

He keeps his eyes closed as he does every morning, hoping the flat darkness will pull him back, away from the brink of consciousness. He remembers Billie, forty-something years ago, threatening to cast his soul into the Empty; no Heaven, no Hell - just eternal sleep afloat in the void. 

Dean snorts. _Promises, promises._

Dean rolls onto his side. Even in Heaven, he can barely manage more than a few hours of shuteye a night. Whenever he tries to grab any more, he finds his eyes flicking open of their own accord, tracing over the mildewed brick wall of his bedroom. The grout lines are messy - poorly smoothed and a little crooked - and several of the bricks are out of square, misshapen. Dean’s stared at them so long he can see them behind his eyelids. 

He blows out a deep sigh, emptying his dusty lungs, and finally peels his eyes open. 

Dean frowns. 

There’s no brick wall, no chipping grout, no lopsided masonry. Instead, there are horizontal slats of dry-rotted wood, defaced with sigils in dripping black spray paint.

A pointed harrumph comes from somewhere behind him, and Dean sits up in a flurry, his neck giving a sharp pop as he peers over his shoulder. 

Cas stands at one of the work tables at the other end of the barn, bagged eyes fixed on the open book before him. He tilts his head towards Dean, but doesn’t look up at him. 

Dean nearly chokes on his next breath, then shakes his head, swallowing dryly. “Shit. Hey,” he grunts out, wincing at the gravel in his voice. 

Castiel’s eyes flick over to Dean for less than a second before he turns back to his book. “Hello, Dean,” he says. His voice is mostly bland, though it’s edged with something sharp. 

Dean sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. He glances down at his legs, flannel-clad and half buried under sweat-damp sheets. He squints down at the covers; baby blue and low thread count - they’re definitely his. He presses his hand against the mattress, watching the imprint stick and then fade - memory foam. 

He’s in his own pajamas, under his own sheets, in his own bed. 

In Cas’ barn. 

_What the—_

“How—” Dean swallows to clear his throat. “How did I get here?”

Cas jerks his chin toward the barn doors. “Your car is parked outside,” he murmurs. “I imagine you drove.” 

Dean stares at him for a moment, then nods down at his hands as if that makes any sort of sense. He runs his tongue over his lips, eyes darting about the half lit barn for any indication of the time. “How long have I...?”

Cas shakes his head and turns a page. “I’m not sure. You were here when I arrived.”

Dean sighs and turns toward Cas, swinging his legs over the bedside. He settles his elbows on his knees, hunching forward. “I don’t remember,” he mutters to his feet. 

A short beat passes, punctuated by the rasp of turning pages and Dean’s own pulse throbbing near his temples. After a moment, the silence grows thick, heavy in the air. 

Dean looks up and finds Cas staring at him, brow furrowed. Dean’s eyes meet Cas’ sunken ones, and Cas turns back to his book. 

“Heaven operates on the power of desire,” he says, tone flat. “Wish Magic, essentially, but...” he trails off on a weary sigh. “It isn’t perfect. You may have—” he shrugs a shoulder, the movement jerky and a little strange, “—thought of this place in passing, and...”

Cas lets the sentence hang, and Dean squints over at him. 

“And what?” Dean grunts. “Heaven just- just _zapped_ me here? With my bed?” He points a shaking finger toward the barn doors. “And my _car?_ ”

Cas sighs again, eyes falling shut. “It’s... not impossible.”

Dean snorts. Generally speaking, that’s been Heaven’s party line as long as he’s been here. Sam, Eileen, Charlie - he’s heard them all waxing poetic about the endless font of magic and mystery that is Heaven 2.0. Everything is possible, everything is perfect - blah blah blah, gay rainbows and sparkly unicorns. 

Dean sniffs and presses the heel of his hand into his eye socket. “Thought Wish Magic was dangerous,” he mutters. He thinks of the ancient Babylonian coin that had brought a teddy bear to life - the shining white pearl that had pulled his father from his grave. 

The teddy bear had blown a hole through its own head, stuffing falling like snow, and the pearl had been crushed to sparkling dust, fine as John’s windswept ashes. 

Cas turns another page. “If it’s supernatural in origin, yes. But the magic of Heaven is purely divine.”

Dean nods, though he’s not sure what difference that makes. Chuck had been divine, and he was a piece of unmitigated shit. Michael was divine too, and he’d clawed at the inside of Dean’s skull like a damned hellhound. 

Dean shakes his head and sniffs. He presses his palms against the mattress, hoisting himself to his feet. He wobbles for a moment, his headache briefly reaching a critical mass, then blows out a long sigh. He peers up at Cas - still studiously attending his book - and takes a cautious step forward. 

Dean licks his lip, and his hands clench and release. “Congrats on the promotion,” he grumbles, before he can think better of it. 

Cas freezes, brow dropping low. “Promotion?”

Dean hums and nods, though Cas isn’t looking at him. “Got your wings back, right?” He takes another step forward, barely two arm lengths away now, and wrestles a smile onto his mouth. “Bigger and better than ever?”

Cas turns his head towards Dean in a sharp movement, though his eyes stay downcast. “Where did you hear that,” he grumbles, and the low scratchy tone grates at something in Dean’s chest. 

Dean swallows. “Read about it in the, uh,” a dry chuckle, “New New Testament.” He takes another tiny step forward, and he’s nearly to the table now. “King Jack Version,” he huffs out with a half-hearted smirk. 

Cas’ chin drops in a motion that might be a nod, and he turns back to his book, eyes scanning over the page far quicker than any human could possibly read. 

But of course, Cas isn’t human. Never was, really. From the moment he’d come crashing into that barn - _this_ barn, incidentally - Dean had known that the rumple-suited man before him was different. Other. _More_ than a man. 

Certainly more than Dean, anyway. 

Dean chews on his tongue and gives a twitchy nod. “Good for you, man,” he grunts out, peering down at his flexing hands. “I’m, uh,” he nods again, more like a shiver. “I’m happy for ya.”

Dean keeps his gaze fixed on his hands, though he thinks he can feel Cas’ eyes on him. He stares hard at his fingernails, his right thumb bitten down to the quick. 

“Thank you,” Cas murmurs, and it’s soft and a little soppy and so very, very _Cas_ that Dean’s vision goes hazy, eyes stinging sharply. 

Dean chews his lip and keeps his head lowered; the words bubbling up in his throat are schmaltzy enough without Cas seeing him go all dewy-eyed. 

“Look, I—” Dean starts and falters, throat going tight. His mouth is bone dry of a sudden, and he swallows reflexively. “I’m sorry about...” he trails off and waves a hand in a vague gesture. He was a dick the last time they spoke, Dean knows that now. 

He’d known it then too, not that that had stopped him running his mouth. “You’re busy,” Dean grits out. “I get it. I just, uh...” Fuck, he hates this - he _hates_ this. “I was thinking we could just—” he shakes his head in a spasmodic twitch, “—start fresh, right? Just- just forget the past and...”

He looks up, finally, and tries to school his expression into something less hopeful and more nonchalant - though he’s pretty sure he left his devil-may-care persona back on earth. 

Doesn’t matter anyway; Cas is staring down at his book, jaw set and eyes hard. Dean’s barely three feet from him now, but it feels like miles - like _years_. 

Dean’s mouth moves before his brain does. “You’re my best friend, Cas, you’re—” He clamps his jaw shut, trapping the words in his mouth, but they press out between his teeth anyway. “You’re my family.”

Dean’s breath hitches, and he blows out a sigh, shoulders sagging. He’s not sure why it’s so hard to say - why it hurts so much, like poking at a broken collarbone. It’s true, after all - not a word of a lie. Might be the truest thing he’s ever said to Cas, now that Dean’s thinking about it. 

Dean sucks in a breath - a tiny smile touching his mouth - and presses on. “So... So can we just—”

“No.”

Dean’s mouth closes hard, teeth catching on the tip of his tongue, and his smile falls. Something hot and heavy coils in the pit of his stomach, and his spine curves around it. 

No. 

_No_. 

Dean shakes his head - once, twice. “No?” he asks, and winces at the crack in his voice. 

Cas hunches forward, palms settling flat against the tabletop. He peers straight ahead, giving Dean a flat, unobstructed profile. The bags under his eyes are pronounced - more so than usual. The line of his cheekbone cuts a deep groove nearly parallel to the straight nose. He doesn’t have laugh lines, and his brow sags low. 

“I can’t...” he murmurs and purses his chapped lips. “I can’t- ‘forget the past,’ Dean.” The words sound colder, harsher than when Dean said them a moment ago. Dean shakes his head, but Cas only glances down at his hands. “And I wouldn’t want to. Even if I could.”

There’s something desolate in his tone - distant and resolute, like a poorly set bone already healed around the damage. 

Dean’s pulse kicks up, hands going clammy. “Cas—”

“They were my last words, Dean,” Cas grumbles, and fuck, Dean isn’t ready for this. “My will, my- my _testament—_ “

Forty years isn’t long enough. A _hundred_ years isn’t fucking long enough. “Cas—“

Cas turns toward him, red-rimmed eyes meeting Dean’s own, sharp and shiny, pinning him in place. Something beats against the inside of Dean’s chest, and Cas says, imploring, “Did you think I didn’t mean them?”

Dean’s eyes fall shut, lungs seizing up, and the trussed up Ma’lak box behind his ribcage jolts. For all he’d once planned to lock himself in it and be cast out to sea, he’s pretty sure there’s an ocean _inside_ it now - waiting to spill out in riptides and crashing waves. Ready to flood him, bury him. Drown him. 

Dean blows out a humid breath. He’s not much of a Noah, and the only ark that’s ever carried him is standing three feet away - grim-faced and dark-eyed, telling him _no_. 

_Why does this sound like a goodbye?_

“Cas, I—” Dean sucks in a sharp breath, the air putrefying in his throat. “I can’t—” _do this without—_

“I know, Dean,” Cas says with a tiny flinch of a smile. His eyebrows form a point in the center of his forehead, head tilting just so. “You have your family, your friends—” he splays his hands in a broad gesture, “—a safe haven. Things are...” He pauses for a moment, breathing a soft sigh. “Things are different now. Better,” he peers up at Dean for half a second, then lets his eyes fall back to his book. “I hope.”

Better. 

_Better?_

Dean shakes his head, the motion twitchy from the mounting swell of dread in his stomach. “Cas—”

“Things have changed for you,” Cas murmurs as if Dean hadn’t spoken at all. He sucks his lips into his mouth, chewing on the bottom one, and it’s such a familiar motion, something Dean’s seen him do a million times, and—

Cas hunches forward, spine forming a wearied curve. “Nothing has changed for me,” he intones, and his voice is restrained and waterlogged, fathoms deep. 

Perhaps he’s in a Ma’lak box, too. 

A bell chimes, soft and tinkling in the barn’s thick air. Dean doesn’t look toward the sound, eyes stuck to Cas’ lined face by a gravity he can’t explain. 

He feels his mouth form Cas’ name, but it fizzles out on the flat of his tongue. He wants to argue; of course, things have changed - Cas got his wings back, he’s immortal, an archangel, for Christ’s sake. _Everything_ has changed. 

And yet. 

Dean’s pulse beats in his ears, a heavy weight clutching at his heart. There’s a clanging, pounding noise echoing in his head, and a great empty pit opens up in his stomach - all writhing fluid and tar-black. Like a premonition, like déjà vu, he knows he is about to lose something, and all he can think to say is _please, please, please don’t do this._

...But he’s already said that. 

The bell chimes again, and Cas closes the book with a careful swipe of his hand. “I have to go now,” he says, and there’s an apology in his voice, but no regret. 

Dean, on the other hand, is a creature composed entirely of regret. “Yeah,” Dean grunts, and drags his eyes away from Cas’ face. They settle on his bare feet, toenails overlong, and he gives a jerky nod. “Yeah, okay.”

Dean swallows hard, and Cas sidesteps around him, giving him a wide berth. Dean hears the soft susurrus of Cas’ wings manifesting somewhere behind him, tastes the slight hint of petrichor on the air. He doesn’t turn around. 

“Goodbye, Dean,” Cas whispers. 

There’s a muted flutter and a sudden, yawning emptiness in the room. Dean’s hands clench and release, clench and release. 

“Bye, Cas,” he says to the graffitied ground, and his chin drops to his chest, eyes burning. 

Cas is right, of course. Nothing has changed.


	10. Chapter 10

Hand fisted, raised, poised before the solid oak door - but Dean doesn’t knock. He should’ve called before he came. 

It’s a nice porch. The roof extends out over it, supported by weathered wood pillars, and there’s a ceiling fan turning lazily overhead. A wide bench sits a couple feet away, with horizontal wood slats and wrought iron legs, and there’s a scrap wood coffee table with a big peach-colored candle in the middle. 

Dean should have called before he came. 

He peers through the little door-side window, but the lights are off inside. Maybe no one’s home. Maybe they’re busy. Dean grimaces - maybe they’re _getting_ busy—

The door swings inward, hinges creaking out a plea for some WD-40, and there’s Bobby, glaring at him squinty-eyed from underneath his ball cap. 

“Dean?” Bobby grunts, eying Dean’s suspended fist. 

Dean’s arm drops, flopping uselessly at his side, and his bicep aches. “Heya, Bobby,” he grunts out, forcing a smirk onto his mouth. 

Bobby squints harder. “Hey your damn self,” he snarks. “You look like pickled shit, boy.” Dean huffs a brittle laugh at that. Bobby stares at him for another moment, considering, before stepping to the side. “Gonna stand there twiddlin’ yer thumbs all day?”

Dean gives a crooked smile and steps over the threshold, scraping his feet against the bristly welcome mat. 

Bobby ushers him through the foyer - dimly lit by the tinted skylight above - and into the dining room. He circles the round mahogany table with its calla lily centerpiece, and steps into a wide archway, gesturing Dean over.

Dean follows him through, boots clicking against the stone tile flooring. It’s a rustic sort of kitchen, country style, with butcher block countertops and a farmhouse sink done in etched porcelain. There’s a pretty pink apron draped over a cabinet door, and matching handtowels on the copper oven handle. 

Dean glances over it all with a tiny smile on his face, while Bobby rifles through a white shaker cabinet. He comes up with two scuffed tumblers and a dusty unlabeled bottle, then juts his chin toward the sliding glass door. 

Dean strides over and pulls it open, standing aside as Bobby steps out onto the raised wooden platform. There’s a tall square table flanked by barstools to his left, and a rusted mesh fire pit on his right, but Dean barely notices either of them. 

Everything is _wet_. 

The awning over the table is dripping, the floorboards damp and shiny, and little rivulets run down the metal handrails at the edge of the platform where it overlooks the lake. 

Dean shakes his head and barks a bemused laugh. “You power-washin’ your deck, or was there a tidal wave?”

Bobby peers over at him, frowning, then he peeks his head out from under the awning, casting his gaze inexplicably skyward. Dean follows his eyes to the clear blue sky and winces at the overbright sun. He looks away, spots dancing on his retina, and finds Bobby staring at him, eyes sharp and speculative. 

Dean feels his brow drop low, shoulders going stiff. “What,” he grumbles. 

Bobby purses his lips and grunts out a cryptic ‘hmph,’ then turns his back to Dean, setting his spoils on the table. 

“Thirsty?” Bobby asks, though he’s already pouring two glasses. 

Dean frowns at the evasion, but shrugs it off, nodding at Bobby’s back. He steps up to one of the barstools at the little table and wipes the water off the seat with the side of his hand. “Always,” he snorts.

Dean swings his leg over the stool, resting his elbows on the tabletop as Bobby settles in opposite him. “Karen home?” he asks as Bobby slides him his glass. 

Bobby glances up at him, swirling his tumbler as if it were Lagavulin and not gasoline-scented rotgut. “Nah,” he grumbles. “She and her sister went to the City.” He brings the glass to his nose and takes a short sniff. “Sure they’re gettin’ into all sortsa trouble.”

Dean nods and stares down at the amber liquid in his glass. He’s heard about the City - seen signs for it on the highway - though he’s never been. He’d learned young that cities are just for passing through - on the way to the next clue, the next job, the next apocalypse. The most he’d ever found in a city was a nameless girl to pass the night with, if he was lucky, or a wanted poster with his face on it, if he wasn’t. 

Dean prefers the open road. 

He brings the glass to his mouth and takes a short sip. It stings like battery acid - Bobby’s ‘legendary’ sour mash always does - but it’s a familiar burn, and Dean savors it. He coughs subtly into his shoulder, grunting, “Whatcha been up to?”

It’s an odd question - neither Dean nor Bobby go in much for small talk - and Bobby clocks it quick. He raises an eyebrow, leveling Dean with A Look, but something in Dean’s face gives him pause. 

He settles back into his seat and shrugs, holding his glass over his belly. “Nothin’ much,” he mutters offhand. “Bit of research for the Arch - wards mostly.” He tilts his head toward the flatlands past the lake. “Rift opened up out in the marsh. Not much pass-through - coupla small fries itchin’ to get outta Purgatory. Bill and Jo’s crew sent ‘em packin’.”

Dean nods, though his stomach goes taut. He hadn’t caught sight of the rift, but he’d seen the Harvelles’ old pick-up trudging across the bog, maybe a mile out from his bunker. He’s got enough friends in the Arch to know that rifts aren’t uncommon, that pass-through is usually minimal, that the Arch can handle it. He also knows they could always use another set of hands, more boots on the ground, as many seasoned, able-bodied hunters as they can get. 

These days, Dean feels more _disem_ bodied than able-bodied - more salty and bitter than seasoned. 

Dean swallows dryly and nods. “S’good.”

Silence reigns for a short moment, during which Dean stares down into his half-empty glass and pretends not to feel Bobby’s eyes on him. 

A beat passes before Bobby blows out a sigh and smacks his tumbler onto the tabletop with an audible thunk. “Out with it.”

Dean’s jaw clenches tight. “Wh—”

Bobby hunches forward and rolls his eyes. “You ain’t here for a gab and a mint julep.”

Dean stares blankly at him for a moment before dropping his eyes to his hands, turning his glass in a slow circle. 

Bobby’s right, of course. Dean isn’t here to shoot the shit - if there’s even any shit to be shot. Trouble is, he’s not sure why he’s here. 

These days, that’s how he spends most of his time - meaningless construct that it is: wondering why he’s here. When Billie had sworn to cast him and Sammy into the Empty, Dean had felt a pit of dread open up on his chest - not for himself, but for his brother. Sam deserved a beautiful eternity spent with Eileen - just as Bobby deserved to be with Karen, Ellen deserved Bill, and Kevin deserved his Resolute desk. 

Dean’s not sure what he deserves, but eternal sleep hadn’t sounded so bad. Still doesn’t. 

Bobby shifts forward in his seat, and Dean looks up at him, noting the heavy brow under the shadow of his ball cap. 

“Speak your piece, boy,” Bobby says, and his tone is mild - kind in that way he pretends not to be. 

“I, uh,” Dean starts and swallows hard. “I went past the mountain. To the—” he runs his tongue over his lip as Bobby squints at him, “—the forest in the field.”

Bobby’s eyes shift to the side before his brows pop up. “Cas’ place,” he surmises. 

Dean’s eyes flutter closed for half a second. Of course, Bobby knows. “Yeah,” he grunts. 

Bobby’s lips purse, and he leans back into his chair. “You talk to ‘im?”

Dean huffs out a bitter laugh. “Somethin’ like that, yeah.”

Bobby’s eyes go sharp and slitted, roving over Dean’s face like he’s looking for something. Whatever it is, he finds it, and he rolls his eyes when he does. 

“Judgin’ by the mopey face, I’m guessin’ that didn’t go so good,” he grumbles. 

Dean’s jaw goes taut, mouth pulling into a rictus of a smile. He breathes out another brittle laugh and shakes his head. “...Nope.”

Bobby stares at him for a short moment, blue eyes squinted against the sunlight. Then he blows out a gusty sigh and reaches for his drink. “You’re a damn fool,” he grunts, and knocks back the last finger. 

Dean blinks several times, brow sagging in a frown. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but that certainly wasn’t it. 

He shakes his head, leaning forward against the table. “What?”

Bobby sets his glass down and folds his arms across his chest, eyes rolling. “You’d think that rusty nail mighta knocked some sense into your head—”

Dean groans. Again with the rusty nail. “It was _rebar—_ ”

“But _nooo_ ,” Bobby scoffs, ignoring the interruption. “Still every bit the damn idjit you always been.”

Dean feels his frown smooth into blank confusion.

Compared to John, Bobby may well be Father of the Year - but he’s no pushover, and he certainly doesn’t pull his punches. Dean’s admired the old man’s brutal brand of honesty for some eighty years now, and he’s always taken it to heart: if Bobby says he’s being an idiot, then it’s very likely that Dean _is_ being an idiot. 

Only, in this instance, Dean’s not exactly sure how.

His bafflement must show on his face, because Bobby’s brow straightens, tone going softer. 

“You’re a good kid,” he says, and the sincerity in his voice has Dean’s shoulders going tense, “but...” He trails off, jaw working like he’s chewing his tongue. After a moment he continues. “There’s a reason you ain’t seen hide nor feather of your angel in half a damn century.”

Dean’s shoulders tense further, crowding up around his ears, and he shakes his head. “He’s not _my—_ ”

“And it’s the same reason,” Bobby says, pitching his voice above Dean’s, “you never quit huntin’.” Dean frowns at that, but doesn’t interrupt. “Same reason you—” Bobby’s jaw goes taut, tone hardening, “you died in a _barn_ instead of callin’ a damn ambulance.”

Dean squeezes his eyes closed. Definitely no punches pulled. “Bobby—”

“And it’s the same reason,” Bobby grunts sharply, pointing a wrinkled finger towards the sky, “that sun shines so damn bright.”

Dean’s jaw clicks shut. The sun... _what?_

Dean knows perfectly well why it’s always sunny: it’s _Heaven_. The whole place is designed to keep people happy; everything - from the bucolic landscape, to the picket-fenced houses, to the cloudless blue sky - all of it exists to preserve the joy, the peace, the contentment of the souls here. 

Maybe all that isn’t really Dean’s bag, but he’d hardly endanger it for a flash of lightning and a few drops of rain. Dean’s happiness has always been the incidental sort, anyway - happenstance and fleeting, ephemeral like morning fog. 

Dean peers over at Bobby and shakes his head, brow furrowed. “I don’t—”

Bobby heaves a sigh, more resigned than frustrated now. “‘Course ya don’t,” he grumbles and reaches for the dusty bottle. “Fish doesn’t know it’s in the water.”

Dean frowns harder, clarity drifting further and further away. Hardly matters, he thinks; fish out of water is dead, anyway.

Bobby leaves his own glass empty, but pours another two fingers for Dean. Dean watches the spirit slosh against the scratched glass, coming nearly to the lip, but never spilling over. He brings it to his mouth to sip, but Bobby raps against the tabletop with his knuckles. 

“Shoot it,” Bobby grunts. “Else it ain’t medicinal.”

Dean nods and knocks the tumbler back, the whisky burning down his throat to roil in his belly. This, at least, he understands.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: The second scene in this chapter features John Winchester. Scroll to the next " **~*~** " to skip the scene.

Shaded and cool, the little forest in the field is a half-lit oasis on the shining plain. 

Though there’s only a smattering of trees, they’re densely packed around the old barn, the canopy stippling strange shadows onto the muddied ground. Dean’s eyes trace them as he trudges the pitted path, stepping over errant roots and brittle fallen branches. 

Dean had pulled up maybe ten minutes ago. He’d idled a few moments, as always, letting Baby’s rumbling purr soothe the tension across his back. When he was certain his legs would hold him, he’d cut the ignition and hoisted himself up, striding towards the barn with all the gusto of a man walking the plank. 

As he’d approached, he’d noticed an odd stillness in the structure - a hollow sort of silence, stilted and uncharged. A quick peek inside had confirmed what he’d already surmised: _empty_. 

Dean had stood there, arms stiff and hands fisted, irritation warring with a swell of dread. Then he’d shaken himself, straightened his spine, and set off down the narrow dirt path amongst the trees. 

Something small and shiny whizzes past Dean’s ear, and he leans to the side in a flinch. 

While the little forest has ample flora - sprawling ferns and squat bushes, green hellebores and dangling bluebells - it’s oddly without much fauna. Dean’s grown rather accustomed to the substratum of birdsong and jumping fish at his inlet; here though, there’s only the occasional rustling of what might be a small rodent, and the buzz of - apparently - bumblebees. 

The little bee circles around Dean, slightly too close for comfort, and he waves a hand to shoo it away. He watches its flight, lazy and seemingly directionless, until it comes upon the back of the old barn. There’s a shining wind chime hung from a flickering sconce lamp, its long Corinthian bells silent in the still air. The bee hovers over it for a moment, then dances off toward a figure at the other side. 

Cas stands at the foot of a spindly oak tree, head craned back to stare up at the canopy. 

Dean stares at his back, watching his shoulder blades shift under his trench coat. He wonders if Cas can feel the weight of his new wings, feel them tugging at his spine even while they’re hidden. 

Dean’s pretty sure Cas knows he’s there. Back when they’d first met, Cas could teleport directly to Dean from a thousand miles away - could find Dean in the dark and cold, endless expanse of Hell. Even powerless and human in an alternate universe, Cas had known Dean nearly the instant he saw him. 

Cas has always known him. Always found him. 

“Would you have ever told me,” Dean murmurs, voice just loud enough to carry. Oddly enough, it’s precisely what he meant to say, what he came here to ask - but the words taste like ash in his mouth. 

Cas’ head tips forward and to the side. His shoulders rise in a deep breath. “I did tell you.”

Dean huffs a laugh at that, face splitting in a wretched smile. It’s a cop-out, and they both know it. Dean’s said enough last words to know they’re inherently selfish - a balm for the dying, not the survivors. 

Cas’ shoulders sag on a sigh, and he glances back up at the tree. There’s a large beehive hanging from a crooked branch overhead. 

“No,” Cas murmurs. 

Dean’s stomach clenches, eyes tracing over Cas’ low-lit form. In the liminal space between the shadows of the trees, his body looks strange - more like a bending of light than a corporeal figure. It occurs to Dean that Cas has no need of a vessel in Heaven, that he has likely restructured his true form for the sole purpose of looking as Dean remembers him. 

Dean bites the inside of his cheek, fingernails digging into his palms. “Why,” he whispers. 

Cas is silent for a moment, still like a statue. The breeze picks up, tinkling the wind chimes at Dean’s side. 

“It wasn’t your burden to bear,” Cas says finally. He takes a diagonal step around the tree, careful to keep his back to Dean. 

Dean resists an almost overwhelming urge to step forward. “Burden?” he calls out, just as the wind dies down. 

Cas halts and glances back up at the tree. Dean follows his eyes to the beehive. It hangs near the end, its weight pulling the narrow branch downward. There’s a knot at the place where the branch meets the trunk, with a wide crack running through it. 

“Yes,” Cas says as he steps further away. “Burden.”

Dean watches him disappear into the thicket, the gnarled trees painting him in shadow, swallowing him up. Dean turns away from the quiet chimes, the buzzing hive, the creaking branch, and backtracks his route along the tortuous path. 

His boots trample hellebores and bluebells alike. 

**~*~**

When he arrives at the inlet, John is sitting on the bench at the end of the pier. 

Dean halts his stride, one foot dangling uselessly in the air. He doesn’t remember the drive from the hayfield, doesn’t know why he’s here, rather than alone in his dark little bunker, rather than floating in the endless abyss of the Empty. He doesn’t know why the sun beats down on his back, why the eden that surrounds him feels like a wasteland. 

He doesn’t know, he doesn’t _know_. 

John peeks over his shoulder and gives Dean a tiny crooked smile. He juts his chin toward a lonesome rod - Dean’s own - propped against the empty side of the bench. 

Dean breathes out a sigh and approaches, grabbing the rod as he sidles onto the seat. He hunches forward and clutches at the grip, thumb fiddling with the reel. His stinging eyes trace the line up the pole and back down, the weight of John’s stare pressing on his shoulders. 

Silence descends on him, _in_ him, and he feels like he had just after Mary had burned - like he’s standing on a snowy slope in the imminence of an avalanche, like the softest spoken word will bury him in debris. 

John makes a little sound in the back of his throat and leans away, rustling in the bag at his side. He comes back upright, shoulder bumping against Dean’s, and holds out a bottle of El Sol. 

Dean eyes the bottle and the wrinkled hand offering it, then he follows the line of the leather-clad arm to John’s face. He’s looking away, squinted eyes watching the play of ripples in the water. His brow is a straight smooth line, his mouth soft. He looks calm and at ease, spine curved and shoulders loose. 

Dean gets the strangest feeling that, for the first time, John expects nothing of him.

Dean stares at him for a moment longer, considering, then takes the beer from John’s outstretched hand. He flicks off the cap with his thumbnail and takes a long pull. It’s sour and hoppy, bitter as always. 

Dean casts his line. 

He knows he won’t make a catch, and that the sun won’t set. He knows he won’t speak a word, and neither will John. He knows the dregs of his beer will be warm and flat. And he knows the fish in the inlet don’t know that they’re wet. 

**~*~**

“‘The other angel.’”

Cas turns sharply, and his book drops onto the table with a dull thud. Dean’s caught him by surprise, he realizes; though he supposes that makes sense - he’s caught himself by surprise as well. Not a moment ago he’d been stood in his modest kitchen, rifling through the cabinets in search of something he can’t remember, when a thought occurred. 

A thought that, apparently, brought him here. 

Cas frowns and shakes his head, eyebrows dropping low. “What?” he grumbles. 

Dean clenches his jaw and takes an unsteady step forward. “‘The other angel,’” he repeats. “‘The one in the dirty trench coat who’s—’” Dean’s jaw clamps shut, teeth digging into his tongue, but he presses onwards, “... ‘who’s in love with you.’ That’s—” he runs his tongue over his lips, though his mouth has gone dry, “—that’s how Balthazar described you to me.”

Cas’ frown persists for an instant, before it smoothes into weary resignation. He turns back toward the table, bagged eyes dropping. 

“Well,” he murmurs. “Subtlety was never Balthazar’s strong s—”

Dean shakes his head. “He _knew_.”

Cas stills, the hand reaching toward his book freezing in the air. 

Dean isn’t sure where the realization had come from, but it had hit him like a damned freight train. And on its heels had come the urgent, almost desperate need to hear Cas deny it. 

Not that Cas had ever been much of a liar. 

An image floats to the surface of Dean’s mind: a pretty brunette with ice blue eyes, offering Cas an army and a shining pointed blade. _We gave you our trust_ , she’d said. _Don’t lose it over one man._

“Hannah knew, too,” Dean grits out, taking another step forward. “Didn’t she.”

_Tell me I’m wrong,_ Dean thinks. _Aren’t I always?_

Cas sighs and hunches forward, pressing his hands flat against the tabletop. “Dean...”

“Naomi,” Dean interjects. _I admire your loyalty,_ she’d said to Dean, lying through her teeth. _I only wish Castiel felt the same way._

Dean takes another step, blossoming rage steadying his motion. “Uriel,” he spits. _You see, he has this weakness; he_ likes _you._ “Hester.” _When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost!_ “Ishim.” _So now, I’m gonna help you. I’m gonna cure you of your human weakness._

That last one carves a fault through Dean’s mind. Ishim had nearly killed Cas, had him supine and bloodied on the cold floor. Dean’s hand had hovered over a banishing sigil, a plea in Cas’ eyes begging him to use it, to smear his grace across the cosmos if only to save Dean’s life. 

Cas’ head tips forward, posture sagging over the table, as he whispers, “ _Dean—_ ”

“ _Everyone knew,_ ” Dean says, and his voice has dropped to a scratchy, untouched octave. “Didn’t they.”

_Tell me I’m wrong._

Castiel sighs, head tipping back like he’s looking to the heavens. Dean wants to laugh at the irony, but there’s something sharp caught in his throat. 

“Many of the Host,” Cas intones, “my... my brethren.” He peers down at his hands, mouth a straight, firm line. “They knew.”

Dean’s eyes squeeze shut, and his head falls forward. His spine feels loose, wobbly like a Jenga tower. 

“They didn’t—” Cas shakes his head, and a muscle in his jaw twitches. “They didn’t _understand_ ,” he murmurs. “But...” he pulls his lips through his teeth, giving a slow, weary nod. “They knew.”

_You’re just sad_ , Ishim says to Cas in the cathedral in Dean’s head. _Pathetically weak._

Human weakness. 

_Human weakness._

Dean sucks in a sharp breath, his hand settling over his roiling stomach. “It’s the reason they hated you, isn’t it,” he whispers, and his voice cracks. “ _I’m_...” he swallows around the lump in his throat and nods sharply. “ _I’m_ the reason.”

_Tell me I’m wrong._

Cas turns toward Dean, his eyebrows arching toward the center of his forehead. His eyes have gone shiny and pink-rimmed. 

“They didn’t hate me, Dean,” he murmurs, and his tone is chiding and pleading at once. “They—”

He cuts himself off, and his eyes flick side to side. Dean can tell he’s searching for a better word - something softer than the barbed, stinging one he’d just barely swallowed down. 

Dean had heard it anyway. 

“ _Pity_ ,” Dean grunts, and he doesn’t bother hoping he’s wrong. He knows better now. “They _pitied_ you.”

Cas holds Dean’s gaze for all of five seconds, before his eyes cut away. 

Dean’s lungs contract, expelling all his breath, and he takes a step backwards, nearly overbalancing in his haste to get out, get gone, get _away_. Cas’ brow furrows, and he takes an abortive step forward, reaching out a hand. 

His _right_ hand. 

“Dean—” he says sharply, but Dean isn’t listening any more. 

He’d borne Cas’ handprint on his arm like a war wound - had worn it on his sleeve like some people wore their hearts. Through all the years they’d known one another, all the foiled apocalypses and paradises lost, it had never occurred to Dean that he might’ve left a mark on Cas, too - that the very touch that gave Dean a reddened handprint, might have given Cas a red right hand. 

Dean spins on his heel in a swift volte face, and marches towards the door, tottery but unfaltering. He crosses the threshold and steps into the garish sunlight. 

He thinks Cas might be calling his name, but it’s muted and distant, garbled like he’s underwater.


	12. Chapter 12

Rough bark digs into Dean’s back where it’s pressed against the gnarled oak tree. 

He’s part way up the knoll, a little ways away from the picnic proper. From this vantage point, he can still see everyone - Mary and John on the big blanket, Ellen and Bill at the grill, Jo and her beau du jour swimming lazy circles out in the lake. Eileen sits next to Karen, both engaged in a lively discussion with Bobby, judging by the frenetic hand movements. 

The grass is wet and gleaming - dew, Dean thinks - and while the sun shines bright overhead, Dean’s comfortable in the shade of the oak tree, away from the crowd. 

A twig cracks underfoot, and Dean looks toward the sound. 

Sam approaches with two beers in hand, sure-footed on the grassy slope. He plops himself down next to Dean, sidling closer until their shoulders press together. He gives Dean a vague half-smile and hands him a beer. It’s an uncapped green bottle with a white label and red logo. Stella Artois. 

Dean frowns and raises an eyebrow, but Sam only shrugs and takes a long swig of his own. 

Dean follows suit. As the lager touches his tongue, he’s tempted to make a face - just on principle - but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. The flavor is mild, the bubbles fine and buoyant, and it cools his throat against the warm spring air. 

They sit in silence for a while, and Dean’s nearly halfway through his beer before Sam speaks. 

“What’s goin’ on with you?”

Dean glances at him sidelong, but Sam is looking down toward the picnic. It’s a vague sort of question - deliberately so, Dean thinks, based on the cautious tone. 

Dean shakes his head and stares down at his boots. “Nothin’ much,” he grumbles, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Just...” he breathes out a short sigh. “I dunno. Tired, I guess.”

That much is certainly true. Not two minutes after he’d left the barn yesterday, it had occurred to him that his car was still parked outside his bunker in the marsh. He’d grumbled a bit, but started walking anyway, humming Whitesnake lyrics under his breath. The gravel path had slowly turned to blacktop, mirages dancing in the stinging sunlight. _Here I go again on my own._

He’d eventually stumbled upon his soggy marsh, his legs cramping, back stiff, and a headache pounding at his temples. In hindsight, Dean supposes he could’ve called for a lift - Sam or Charlie would’ve come for him, surely. Or he could’ve just _wished_ his way home - the divine magic of Heaven, and all that. 

Thing is, once he’d started walking, it hadn’t occurred to him to do anything else. _Going down the only road I’ve ever known._

Dean wets his lips, chewing the bottom one. “Can I ask you somethin’?”

Sam turns toward him, eyebrows raised. He gives a circumspect nod and sets his beer on a protruding tree root. “‘Course.”

Dean brings his knees to his chest, folding his arms across them. “Why...” he trails off for second, the weight of Sam’s stare pressing the words back down his throat. He harrumphs, cutting his gaze across the pasture to the shoreside picnic, and tries again. 

“Why’d you quit huntin’?” he says in a rush. “I mean, after I...”

Sam lets him hang for a few seconds before smirking. “After you... bit it?”

Dean rolls his eyes and bumps his shoulder against Sam’s. “Yeah. That.”

Sam huffs a mild laugh and follows Dean’s eyes out to the lake. He’s quiet for half a minute, and Dean waits. 

“I didn’t really,” he says eventually. “Quit, I mean. Eileen and I, we—” he tips his head side to side, “we slowed down, I guess, when we found out about Junior.” He heaves a short chuckle and hunches forward. “Those first couple years after he was born were...” He pauses for a moment, combing his fingers through his hair with a fond smile. “He was more than enough monster for both of us.”

Dean smiles, though something is pinching in his chest. His nephew - his namesake - is still down there, crawling across the earth. Dean knows he’ll meet him one day, but there’s an ache near his heart for all the years he’s already missed. 

Dean nods sharply and wrestles a smirk onto his mouth. “Gets that from his uncle,” he grunts and takes a long gulp of his beer. 

Sam turns to him with a raised eyebrow. “Being a monster?”

Dean hums and nods. “And a, uh, ruggedly handsome ladykiller,” he adds, pointing a forefinger toward his own face.

Sam tips his head back in a laugh. “Right,” he huffs out. “Except that he’s the spitting image of Eileen. And he’s gay.”

Dean’s head pops up at that, and he feels his eyes narrow into a squint. 

Dean Winchester, Jr is _gay_. 

In hindsight, Dean probably should have known that already. Sam had mentioned Junior’s ‘partner’ Alex before - but frankly, Dean had figured that was just Sam being precious about it. He’d assumed Alex was an _Alexandria_ , or maybe an _Alexis_. 

Dean frowns at himself, wondering why _Alexander_ hadn’t even occurred to him.

He glances back up at Sam to find his expression has gone pensive. There’s a wariness in the straight set of his mouth, belied by a shrewd sort of softness in his eyes. 

Something hot clenches in Dean’s stomach - an old forgotten shame he hadn’t felt since he’d made Lee climb bare-assed out the motel window just as Sam came through the door. 

Sam hadn’t spoken a word - just raised an eyebrow at Lee’s boxers and undershirt strewn across the floor, and handed Dean a Mars Bar he’d lifted from the Gas ‘n Sip. Precocious little shit. 

Dean hunches forward, pressing his chest against his knees. “My point stands,” he grumbles and takes another swig. 

Sam smiles at that and shakes his head. “Right, well,” he goes on. “Eileen and I took a few years off, til Junior was old enough to...” he shakes his head again, shrugging his shoulders. “We didn’t want to lie to him, ya know?”

Dean nods; he does know. John and Mary had lied to them both - and to each other - and it hadn’t gotten them anywhere but six feet under. 

“So,” Sam continues. “Once he was old enough to understand what we we were doing, where we were going, why it’s important—” he tips his head to the side, lips pursing, “—we, sorta got back into it. But...”

Sam goes silent, staring down at his hands wringing together in his lap. 

Dean frowns at him. “What?” he prompts. 

Sam sighs deep and scratches at the back of his head, mussing his hair. “I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Wasn’t the same. It was just... bumps and bruises, spilling salt all over the dash, and...” He chews on his lip for a second before glancing over at Dean. “It just made me miss you.”

Dean feels his frown deepen, etching itself into his brow. 

Of the two of them, Dean had always known that Sam was the one who could survive on his own. He’d done it before, after all; he’d packed up, given Dean and John a bitter ‘good riddance,’ and fucked off to Stanford for _years_. 

Dean hadn’t called him while he was away, though he’d held his phone in his hands nearly every night, staring at Sam’s number with his thumb hovering over the button. 

He glances up at Sam - at the downturned mouth and the shining eyes - and thinks, for the first time, that Sam might’ve done the same. 

Forty years is a long time. 

Sam sniffs and shakes himself. “Anyway,” he says, and his voice is level, but thick. “It - hunting - it just, uh. It didn’t make me happy.” He turns toward the distant water, the revelers at the little picnic on the shore. “Eileen made me happy,” he intones with a growing smile. “Junior made me—” he shakes his head, eyes going bright, “ _—so_ happy.” 

Sam pauses briefly, and Dean follows his eyes as they climb to the faraway mountains, silhouetted in the afternoon sun. 

“I never gave it up entirely,” Sam murmurs. “If someone needed help, I’d-. I’d figure something out. But...” He hunches forward, settling his elbows on his knees. “I realized one day that... happiness isn’t given. It’s _taken_.” He shakes his head again and looks back toward the picnic. His face goes soft and smiley, and Dean knows he’s staring at Eileen. “If you want it, you gotta... you gotta grab it. Hold onto it.”

_Grab it. Hold onto it._

_...If you’re looking for rain..._

_...You taught yourself not to want it..._

_...Fish doesn’t know it’s in the water._

Something cracks in Dean’s chest, and he’s talking before he can trap the words behind his teeth. “I’m not sure I-.”

He cuts himself off, biting down hard on his tongue, but the damage is already done. Even so, he waits for Sam to ask, unsure if he can say the words unprompted - if he can even say them at all. 

Sam doesn’t disappoint, and his tone is light and mild, curious when he murmurs, “What?”

Dean picks at the label on his bottle, eyes fluttering shut. “M’not sure I’d know it if I saw it,” he grits out, voice pitched just above a whisper. “Happiness.”

Dean feels Sam’s eyes on him, feels the weight of his stare pressing him down into the wet grass beneath him - but Sam only sighs. 

Dean looks up, querying him with a frown. 

Sam gives him a tiny, crooked smile. “You wanna know what I think?”

From nearly anyone else, it might be a snarky question, but there’s a sincerity in Sam’s tone - a gravity - that gives Dean pause. 

He could say _no_ , and they could carry on as ever, as always. They’d stare down at the picnic a while, til Sam got up to go join them. Dean would head home to sit alone on the ratty couch in his bunker, or sit alone at his little inlet, never catching any fish, or sit alone in his car parked outside the forest in the field - unable to enter, unable to turn away. 

Dean could say _no_ , but he thinks he has enough regrets. 

He swallows hard. “‘Yeah,” he grunts and clears his throat. “‘Course.”

Sam’s smile widens for a moment, before his face goes somber. “There are things that make you happy, Dean,” he says sotto voce. “You just don’t trust them. You...” He gives Dean a look, all subdued melancholy and straight-mouthed empathy. “You have no faith in them.”

An old abandoned barn appears in Dean’s head - the twin of the one just beyond the mountains. A man with limpid blue eyes set in a wide, stark face stands in the wake of high winds and dancing sparks. 

_This is your problem,_ Cas had said in the tumult of rolling thunder, beneath the shadow of arching wings. _You have no faith._

“And I get it, ya know,” Sam continues, cutting through the reverie. “You...” he sighs and peers at Dean, mouth pursing. “You lost a lot of the things that made you happy. I know that.” He shakes his head. “But...”

Dean stares at Sam’s profile. He’s got Mom’s nose and Dad’s chin, Mom’s straight spine and Dad’s weathered hands; but mostly, he’s just himself - a man of his own. Dean’s always wondered how he managed that. 

Dean harrumphs into his shoulder, chewing on his tongue. “But?”

Sam gives him an opaque look, then turns toward the cookout. Eileen and Jo are dragging a grumbling Ellen toward the water. Mary’s sprawled out on the grass with her feet in John’s lap, laughing up at the sky. 

“We’re in Heaven, Dean,” Sam murmurs, and there’s a startled sort of wonder in his voice. “ _Real_ Heaven. Destroyed and rebuilt til they- til they got it _right_. This is...” He breathes out a little sound that might be a laugh. “This is happiness bedrock, Dean.”

_Happiness bedrock,_ Dean repeats in his head. _Happiness bedrock._

He’d known the moment he arrived - felt it in his bones - that this was _it_. End of the line. The thought had sobered him, at first, calmed him in the wake of his death. But the longer he lingers here, the more miles he puts on Baby, the more sunny days he wastes away on his bench at the end of the pier - the heavier his head seems to grow. 

He doesn’t miss the earth - not really. He’d never say as much out loud, but he’d lived far longer than he’d ever wanted to - ever meant to. He was tired when he asked Sam to stay with him, to finally let him go, and even here, on the other side of the pearly gates, that weariness hasn’t faded. 

Dean had spent most of his life digging his own grave - and digging some more, and digging some more. Finding bedrock should be a victory, should feel like a reward, and yet—

Sam’s shoulder bumps Dean’s as he hoists himself to his feet. Dean glances up at him, eyes squinted against the spots of light shining through the leaves overhead. 

“I’m safe, Dean,” Sam says simply. “And happy. Everyone - all of our family, our friends. We’re safe. And happy. I just...” 

Sam breathes out a short sigh, plucking Dean’s empty bottle from his loose fingers. He glances down at the picnic, then out to the mountain pass. Dean watches him squint at the valley between the peaks and gets the sense that Sam isn’t looking at the mountains at all, but _beyond_ them. 

Sam hangs his head, hair fluttering into his face, and he looks so much like the kid Dean raised that his eyes go a little misty. 

“I just wish you were happy, too,” Sam murmurs, and sets off back down the hill. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one chapter left! :)


	13. Chapter 13

Fifty-something years ago, Dean had worked a case at a little university somewhere in Maine.

He’d caught word from another hunter - Lee maybe, he doesn’t quite remember - that an artifact storeroom in the archaeology building was haunted. There’d been reports of objects moving on their own, cold spots and the smell of smoke, and the soft, distant strains of anguished weeping. Nothing particularly bad (no injuries or deaths, in any case), and the disturbances had only started a couple weeks before - just after an earthquake had shaken the northeast. Dean had figured it’d be a simple salt and burn.

It’d taken barely a minute in the storeroom to find the haunted object; his EMF had directed him to an ancient clay vase - scorched at the bottom and chipped around the mouth, with a crack running down the side like a fault line. 

The student begrudgingly helping him sort through the artifacts - a tall Asian girl with a nametag that read Sanae (though she’d introduced herself as “heck this, I’m a freaking _T.A._ ”) - had informed him that the vase (or _vessel_ , she’d called it) was Corinthian in origin, circa 100-something B.C. It had survived Corinth’s decimation by the Romans, then an earthquake in the nineteenth century, another quake in the ‘20s, and a devastating fire in ‘33. 

Dean had surmised that the vessel was bad luck, but Sanae had disagreed. 

“It’s the spirit of Corinth,” she’d said, matter of fact. “Devastated and destroyed, but rebuilt stronger, better, every time.”

Dean had returned in the dead of night, pilfered the vase from the storeroom, and headed out to a little copse by the parking lot to burn it. As he’d poured the lighter fluid over it, a little girl had appeared between the trees. 

She was young - maybe eight or nine - with dark hair and shining eyes. Her right arm was burnt black, her left leg misshapen as if crushed, her face battered and bruised. 

“ _Patéras_ ,” she’d whispered tearfully. “ _Voíthisé me._ ”

Dean had stared at her, his gaze running over her broken form, her torn gown, her tiny reaching hands. He wasn’t much for Greek, but he’d caught the sentiment nonetheless. 

“He’s waiting for you,” he’d said as he sparked his dad’s old lighter. 

He’d touched the flame to the vessel’s handle and watched it alight. The girl had burned in white flames, with a wide, rapturous smile. 

**~*~**

Dean had always thought Sanae was wrong. It wasn’t the spirit of Corinth - just a lost little kid, soul destroyed by endless tragedy. 

Dean himself had been destroyed, after all: devastated by his mother’s death, crushed under the weight of his father’s stark misery. He’d been cast into the Pit and rent apart, sullied by demon and angel alike. 

Cas had been destroyed, too: his atoms dispersed at the snap of an archangel’s fingers, blood blackened by wretched souls. His very mind had been broken, colonized, infiltrated - his own happiness weaponized against him. 

Between the two of them, destruction and devastation had become something like status quo, nearly commonplace in its almost constant recurrence, but—

But.

_We’re in heaven, Dean._ Real _heaven. Destroyed and rebuilt til they- til they got it_ right _._

For all the tragic deaths and bloody, brutal ends, Dean and Cas had been rebuilt - over and over and _over_ again. Sometimes by the cruel will of God or Fate, sometimes at the well-meaning hands of friends and family. 

And sometimes, they rebuilt each other. Propping one another up, building foundations under the other’s stumbling feet.

_I need you_ , Dean had said once, as he’d pulled Cas away from Heaven. 

_I love you_ , Cas had said, as he’d given Dean the world. 

_Maybe_ , Dean thinks as he pulls up outside the old rickety barn. A strange new cloud obscures Heaven’s sun - dark and heavy where it hangs in the sky, casting a cool blue shadow across the endless plain. 

_Maybe_ , Dean thinks as he cuts the ignition. 

_Maybe Sanae was right._

**~*~**

Dean finds Cas in the shade of a leafless maple tree, his palms pressed flat against the scorched-black trunk. Bumblebees dance through the hellebores at his feet, and a mild breeze flutters the hem of his trench coat. The wind chimes tinkle a discordant melody.

His spine is ramrod straight, head tilted up toward the canopy, but his chin drops to chest when he senses Dean’s presence. 

His voice is low and scratchy, martyred as he grunts a plaintive, “ _Dean_.”

The word hits Dean like meltwater, freezing him in place for a short, fragile beat.

Any other day, the tone might’ve put Dean off. There’s something sour in it, like an uncleaned wound covered and left to fester. The unspoken plea - _leave me be, go away_ \- rings through the humid air. 

Any other day, Dean might’ve heeded it. _Today_ , Dean says: 

“Shut up.”

Cas turns to him sharply, brow sinking low and eyes squinting in startled offense. “Wh—”

“You said your piece,” Dean says, voice carrying on the breeze. “When I wanna hear it again,” he takes a small, deliberate step forward, “I’ll ask.”

Cas shakes his head, frowning mouth working soundlessly. The wind kicks up, scattering the little bees, and one lands on Cas’ throat before fluttering its tiny wings and buzzing away. 

Dean grits his teeth and steels himself, pulling the words from the chasm in his chest.

“Ya know,” he grumbles, taking another short step. “I been sittin’ around up here, doin’—” he glances down at his feet and huffs a bitter laugh, “—jack shit. _Nothin’_.” He wets his lips, pulling the bottom one through his teeth. “Just sittin’ in my shit wondering—” his breath pours out of him, of a sudden, the words threatening to climb back down his dry throat. But he sucks in a sharp breath and soldiers on, “... wondering why I _hate_ it here.”

Cas’ eyes flutter closed, brow forming a pained line. “Dean—”

“Wondering why I feel like a goddamn bruise,” Dean goes on, taking another, surer step toward Cas. “Wondering why... it never rains.”

Cas’ eyes flick open, and he blinks once, frowning in bemusement. He shakes his head, but doesn’t speak, and his jaw clenches taut. 

“Ya know what, though?” Dean whispers, and he feels the corner of his mouth pull up in a wry smile. “I think I figured it out.”

He inches closer, boots heavy and sticking to the ground, and tilts his head in the vague direction of the lake.

“There were puddles at Bobby’s place,” he murmurs, then waves a limp-fingered hand toward the river. “Wet grass at the picnic.” Another step forward, ever closer, and there’s something dawning in Cas’ eyes now, glazing them over as they track Dean’s every move. “There’s mud on my boots,” Dean whispers, “even now.”

Cas’ jaw twitches, and he turns his face away, eyes hooded in the shadow of his brow. He gives a poorly feigned shrug, muttering flatly, “I don’t know what you mean.”

_When we want something_ , Dean had said once, straightening Cas’ tie just to feel his throat under his fingers, _we lie_. He wonders if Cas had taken that for the edict that it was - wonders if that was the moment that Dean had taught him _shame_.

Dean doesn’t know the answer - doubts he even wants to - but he does know one thing. 

“It _does_ rain here,” Dean says, halting his motion barely a yard away from Cas. “Just…” He blows out a breath and finally - _finally_ \- says it: “Just not on _me_.”

Cas sighs deep, shoulders curling forward. His hands clench and unclench at his sides, face darkening like a storm. “If you don’t like the weather,” he grunts out, bitter and briny, “you can change it.”

Dean knows that. “I know that.”

Cas’ glassy eyes roll skyward and he makes an aggravated sound, splaying his hands in frustration. “Then _what_ , Dean,” he growls, voice bleak and a little shaky.

Dean breathes out a sigh. There’s a sheen growing in Cas’ eyes, something exhausted and aching, angry and _heartsick_. It’s a familiar expression, one Dean’s seen painted on his own face a million times over - but it ruptures something in his chest to see it on Cas.

Dean opens his mouth to respond, but Cas is having none of it. 

“This is—” Cas starts, scrubbing an exasperated hand over his face. His voice is low and cracking, thick in his throat. “This is _unsustainable_ , Dean. I- I can’t,” his throat works like he’s choking on air, “I _can’t—_ ”

Dean knows that too. “I know that too.”

Cas’ head drops like he can’t hold it up anymore, and Dean thinks for a second that he looks like an old Renaissance portrait - all blue-tinted shadows and oil-painted misery.

Dean takes another step forward - slow and cautious, for both of their sakes. He gets the feeling he’s on unsolid ground, precarious and shifting under his feet. Any sudden move, a single wrong step, and he’d sink them both. 

But he can’t stop, and he won’t turn back. Not anymore.

He’s close enough now that Cas has to tip his head back to meet Dean’s eyes. The movement stretches the length of his throat, sharpening the line of his jaw. His lips are a downturned bow, his eyes a deeper blue than Dean’s ever seen them.

His voice is gravelly, nearly broken when he speaks. “Why are you _here_. Dean.”

Dean nearly smiles at that. For the first time ever, he thinks he knows this one. 

He reaches out a hand, brushing his fingers over the knob of Cas’ wide wrist. The contact buzzes against his skin, electric and charged. “There was rain the day I met you,” he murmurs. “Wind. Thunder.” He presses his thumb against the fragile bones on the inside of Cas’ wrist. “ _Lightning_.”

Cas’ eyes fall shut, and a few errant tears skitter toward the corners of his mouth. They clump his eyelashes together, leaving shiny tracks on the sharp angles of his face. Dean wants to smear them across his cheeks with his fingertips. 

“That…” Cas whispers, and a cord in his neck flexes as he swallows. “That was _me_. Dean.”

Dean’s face splits in a broad smile, and his vision blurs. “Ya think?” he huffs out, fingers curling around Cas’ forearm. He brings his other hand to encircle Cas’ elbow, his thumb sinking into the hollow at the crease.

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas sighs, and it sounds like a prayer. His chin wobbles, the rims of his eyelids gone pink and shiny. “What. Do you _want_.”

Ah. _There_ it is. 

Dean had spent so damn long looking for the answer - scouring Heaven and Hell and the Earth alike - that he’d all but forgotten the question. 

What do you want?

What do you _want?_

Dean leans in close, his nose a few scant inches from Cas’, and he slides his hands up to the broad, hunched shoulders. The base of his palms press against the curve of Cas’ collarbone, and Dean feels the movement as Cas sucks in a breath.

His gaze flicks back and forth between Cas’ limpid eyes, and he whispers, finally, “I want it to _rain_.”

Cas’ shoulders sag under Dean’s hands, just as a boom of thunder sounds. The forest darkens as a cloud thickens over head, and a bolt of lightning cracks across the sky. 

In an instant - a perfect, shining Moment that Dean thinks he’ll remember forever - he and Cas are soaked in a torrential downpour. 

Dean looks toward the sky, the ice-cold rain biting into his skin, washing the salt from his wide eyes. The water drips from Cas’ jaw down the side of his neck, winding around the fine hairs there. It pools at the place where Dean’s palms meet Cas’ throat, seeping in between and fusing their skins.

Dean’s tempted to raise his arms - to dance into the storm like when he was a boy - but a soft touch near his heart stills him. 

He looks down at his chest, where Cas has pressed his wet hand, then peers up into his face. There’s something there - or nearly so; something Dean had only seen once, but briefly, before it was swallowed in darkness - torn away in cruel spite.

Cas’ lips move like he wants to smile, but he isn’t sure how. “Dean,” he whispers, and stretches his fingers toward the hollow of Dean’s throat. 

“Say it again,” Dean commands, and suddenly he’s desperate to hear the words - _needs_ them like air, like sunlight. Like rain.

Cas’ face crumbles, and he makes a sound that could be laugh or a sob. He stares down at his fingers - scratching idly at Dean’s clavicle - and shakes his head.

“I said I’d ask,” Dean prods, with a warm crooked smile, “when I wanted to hear it.” He slips his hands from Cas’ shoulders to the stark bolts of his jaw, smoothing his thumbs over the damp planes of his cheeks. “ _Please_ ,” he urges. “Say it again.”

Cas’ eyes climb up, roving over Dean’s face like he’s committing it to memory - like he’s seeing it for the very first time. And perhaps he is.

He licks his chapped lips, hair dripping into his eyes, and whispers, “ _I love—_

**~*~**

Dean swallows the words. 

They taste like salt and rainwater, scorched earth and dry ash. They burn his lips where they’re pressed against Cas’, stinging his tongue where it scrapes Cas’ teeth. There’s something sweet, too, in the breaths they share, in the clench of Cas’ hands in the soaked fabric of Dean’s shirt.

Dean looks inward, and _sees_.

Somewhere in his chest, there’s a tumbledown city - bombed out and burned down, razed and run through. But the broken ground is shifting, the rain putting out the embers, and for the first time in his life, Dean thinks he could rebuild it. 

Stone by cracked stone, brick by wet brick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And that's all she wrote. Thanks for reading :)
> 
> P.S. I may post the original dialogue-only draft of this fic, if anyone is interested. There are a handful of marked differences, but if you'd like to see it, let me know in the comments. Thanks!
> 
> P.P.S. If you've got a prompt, need a beta, or just want to say hello, come visit me on [tumblr](https://theshopislocal.tumblr.com/) :)


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